PC limiting speed?

[ianmr65]

I have recently upgraded from XL 20, to XL 60 as part of the free upgrade.

With the old VM wireless hub, (modem only) and previous to this the old VM modem, hitting close to 20 Mbps wired and wirelessly was not an issue. Following the upgrade to the superhub, in modem only mode, which goes into an netgear N wireless router, then a netgear unmanaged 10/100 switch for the wired connections the maximum I have been able to achive is 40 Mbps wired, on a w2k3 pc and considerably less wirelessly. (26 Mbps-ish with an a brand new N netgear wireless adapter)

I noticed that my downstream power levels were not optimal, so got an VM engineer out who installed an attenuator and checked everything on the virgin side of the modem, and was eventually able to achieve 60Mbps with his high spec laptop plugged directly into the SH.

And so he blamed my kit for the slower speeds

I have used TCP/IP optimizer, and disabled all the firewalls, and so on, to no effect.

The question is therefore can anyone give me any clues as to why an older spec pc, and brand new netgear wireless adapter are not performing with the superhub, when they worked fine with the VM wireless Hub, and modem?

[General Maximus]

there are a few different factors which can effect it; firstly the window sizes on an old OS, I am not sure how flexible they are even with a tcp optimiser. Secondly the transfer rate of the hdd and the bus speed on the motherboard. Thirdly, if the pc is that old I would be looking at the cpu as well.

The best thing to do is disconnect your pc from the router and switch and directly connect it to the shub in modem mode and see what sort of speed you can get. Speed tests arent always 100%, especially with the shub, so if you dont get the result you are looking for you want to be going to somewhere like www.gamershell.com and downloading 5 or 6 large files and adding up their cumulative download speed. Better to do it during the day and not in the evening is as well because the network is always congested and will give you a false negative.

[thenry]

Following on from Generals post.

What are your computer(s) specs?

Which router do you have?

What wireless adapter(s) have you got?

[ianmr65]

Thanks for the replies...

What are your computer(s) specs?

Operating System Microsoft Windows Server 2003,
OS Service Pack Service Pack 2
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Motherboard
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4, 2519 MHz (19 x 133)
Motherboard Name Dell Dimension 8250
Motherboard Chipset Intel Tehama i850(E)
System Memory 1024 MB (PC1066 RDRAM)
BIOS Type Phoenix (01/09/04)

Storage
IDE Controller Intel(R) 82801BA Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 244B
SCSI/RAID Controller D347PRT SCSI Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller MagicISO SCSI Host Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller SCSI/RAID Host Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller VAX347S SCSI Controller

Disk Drive ST3120023A (120 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)

Average Rotational Latency 4.16 ms
Rotational Speed 7200 RPM
Max. Internal Data Rate 570 Mbit/s
Average Seek 9.4 ms
Interface Ultra-ATA/100
Buffer-to-Host Data Rate 100 MB/s
Buffer Size 2 MB
Spin-Up Time 10 sec

Disk Drive WDC WD1600JB-00GVA0 (149 GB, IDE)

Network
Network Adapter Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC (192.168.1.2)


Which router do you have?

Netgear RangeMax Next Wireless Router WNR834B

What wireless adapter(s) have you got?

Netgear WNCE2001 Universal WiFi Internet Adapter

[thenry]

look up wifi networks then change your wireless networks channel accordingly.

upgrade too.

[adzzzbatch]

Boot your computer into safe mode with networking and then run a speed test.

[General Maximus]

Boot your computer into safe mode with networking and then run a speed test.

i forgot about that one :)

[ianmr65]

Thanks for all the replies guys :-)
I've certainly learnt a lot about networking speed.

Turns out both me and the VM engineer should have used Opera to do the 5 or 6 download files exercise that General Maximus suggested as opposed to Chrome and speedtest net

Opera gave me a combined download speed of 58Mbps..:clap: Google chrome only managed 35 Mbps for the same four files.:td:

Thanks again!

[General Maximus]

the thing which people dont realise is that the connections as so fast these days that it is hard to max them out on a single transfer/connection/file. Your internet connection is designed for multi-user usage such as children playing games on the xbox, daughter on facebook on laptop and mum and dad doing whatever else. I have got 100mbit and the only time I max out my connection is using programs which are designed for multiple connections such as torrents and newsgroups.