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Weird Wi-Fi problem

Tags:
  • WiFi
  • Devices
  • Wireless Connections
  • Wireless Router
  • Download
  • Performance
Last response: in General Connectivity
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February 6, 2014 9:08:30 AM

I have a Linksys/Cisco WRT160N wireless router that's been running fine for a few years. I have a mix of wired and wireless connections throughout my house. Download speeds for my wired devices is typically in the 50-60 mbps range. Wi-fi download speeds are, slower than that, but still typically in the 20-30 mbps range.

A couple of evenings ago, wi-fi performance suddenly went south on *all* my wi-fi devices (laptops, iPad, iPhone, etc.). Download speeds dropped into the low kbps range (0.01 mbps). But download speeds on my wired devices remained the same.

Performance was so poor that network connections were dropped and, in some cases, the wi-fi device couldn't even get to the DNS server. Pings that normally took 10-20 ms were timing out.

Here's the weird part. This did not appear to be a wi-fi signal quality problem, as this awful wi-fi performance showed up even with wi-fi devices sitting right next to the router and showing full signal strength.

The fact that download speeds on my wired devices are still normal suggests this is not a problem with my cable modem or my ISP (if it were, I would expect to see the same performance hit on both wired and wi-fi devices).

I obviously tried rebooting everything, from the cable modem on back to the individual wired and wi-fi devices, with no effect. I also tried disconnecting all of my wired connections to the router to see if that was somehow contributing to the problem. I even powered off all wi-fi devices except a laptop, just in case there was a rogue wi-fi device that was hogging all the bandwidth. No change (in fact I couldn't get a reliable internet connection on the laptop as it couldn't always communicate with the assigned DNS server.)

I'm heading off to Starbucks with my laptop to see if the wi-fi performance improves there.

Any other suggestions on how I can further troubleshoot this problem? Do I simply have a router-gone-bad that need replacing?

Thanks.

More about : weird problem

February 6, 2014 9:14:19 AM

Do a wireless survey to see if anyone close to you is using the same wireless channel you are using. If so, change your channel and try again.

Just something to check. Good luck!
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