Why are my internet speeds much slower on only 1 PC in my house?

Nicholas_39 · Jul 3, 2016

We're paying for 30 mbs down and 5 mbs up. All the devices in my house get above 20 consistently, a few macbooks and 1 wired PC. My PC's wireless connection is usually around 10 mbs down and 5 mb up, but often goes down to under 2 mbs down and 1 mbs up. Very erratic behavior at all times of day (maybe worse at peak hours).

I have a Dell XPS 8300, and I've read that a lot of people have had problems with their stock DW1501 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Cards. It seems people had success changing the BSS mode from 802.11n to 802.11g, but that has not worked for me.

I would really appreciate any help as this is driving me crazy. Thanks

Ralston18 · Jul 4, 2016

Have you tried updating the drivers and reconfiguring the network wireless adapter?

Are you able to temporarily move your Dell up higher or otherwise try some relocation testing?

Does not take much to interfere with wireless signals - especially if there are multiple devices on your network.

Try borrowing a USB wireless adapter and test with that. Use a USB extension cable to likewise raise the wireless adapter up and about.

Nicholas_39 · Jul 5, 2016

Ralston18 :

I have tried updating the drivers to my wireless card and my gpu. Both were already up to date, but I thought it was weird that my wireless card's driver date is 1/21/2010 which seems old. The only re-configuring I've done is change the mode from 802.11n to 802.11g.

I really don't want to move my desktop because it would be a 2 man job and would take a long time. I'm pretty sure signal strength isn't the issue. I tested with macbooks in my room, all worked fine. I have a full 5 bars of signal strength showing nearly all the time, and I've gotten 30 MB down before on this machine. (90% of the time its ~10 MB down, 8% of the time its < 2 MB down, rarely I get the fully 30. Upload rate seems unaffected unless it's during < 2 MB period)

I don't currently have access to a USB wireless adapter, but I can certainly see myself having to buy one in the near future. I would just rather exhaust all my option before having to buy new hardware.

While I was doing my own trouble shooting, I noticed that many people in a similar situation solved their issues by uninstalling AMD's QuickStream program. I have an AMD Radeon 6900, but I don't think I have this program installed. Ultimately I wouldn't be surprised if the graphics card ended up being the issue since I've had many problems with AMD/this card.

Also thanks for the response.

edit: I just found the DW WLAN Card Utility tool, and that speed consistently reads 54.0 Mbps, and speedtest.net is reading 6 Mbps down and 2 up right now.

Ralston18 · Jul 6, 2016

Could well be the card and as a matter of elimination you may be down to the card itself.

There may be some "threshold" value where the card works well but if the signal strength goes below some value the reception fails. Overall the performance loss could be due to software, firmware, or hardware.

Go into Control Panel and see if QuickStream is installed and running. Stop and/or uninstall just to get remove that as a possibility.

You might take a look at the Event Viewer logs and see if there are any errors or warnings with respect to network connectivity. May not be conclusive. And also look for problems with the graphics card.

Troubleshooting intermittent problems is a bit tedious but you still have options available and things to look at.

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Why are my internet speeds much slower on only 1 PC in my house?

Nicholas_39

Commendable

Ralston18

Ralston18

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Nicholas_39

Commendable

Ralston18

Titan

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