Problem with Belkin 7011 wireless card

[frankienyc123]

Ok Im using a Belkin 7231-4 and I use a Belkin 7011 card in my notebook and a Belkin 7001 card in my desktop. Now the desktop works great and connects in "high speed mode" 125mbs but when I use the laptop even in the same room it only connects at 54mbs and then drops off to around 11mbs after a minute or two. Now I dont understand why it wouldnt connect at high speed mode if the desktop does? Ive also notices if I turn off "afterburner" my connection stays at 54 or 48mbs and doesnt drop down to 11mbs. Can someone please help? The way I see it is if I paid the extra money for the high speed mode router and cards then it should work? I have a 15down/2up cable connection.
Thanks
Frank

 

[frankienyc123]

Ok this gets even more interesting. I was fooling around with the settings and noticed when i turn off "afterburner" on the deskto or notebook and run at 54mbs I get almost 2x the speed I was getting with it enabled. So here is what im getting

Notebook:
High speed mode enabled-I get a connection speed of 54mbs to start but it goes down to 11mbs after a minute or two. When I test the bandwith on some of the onnline speed tests I get an average of 2500/800kbs

high speed mode off-Conection speed is steady at 54mbs and I get speeds of 6500/1200kbs

Desktop:
high speed mode-connection speed is steady at 125mbs and I get speeds around 3000/1000kbs

high speed off-connection speed is 54mbs and I get 6700/1100kbs.



Now this isnt making much sense since you would think "high speed" would be faster but im getting almost double the bandwith with it disabled? Any ideas??

 

[The_Fonz]

Well, I'm no expert in this router but I was interested in buying it (I read the manuals), so your post drew my intention. I'll just give some ideas, perhaps it can help.

Did you look at the other hardware settings of the adapter in your notebook? Perhaps there is something wrong there.
Is there, apart from your desktop and notebook, another client in your network? Because the highspeed only works when all clients can cope with it.
Did you run the diagnostic tests from your adapters LAN Utility, perhaps there is something wrong with the hardware?
Did you try using Frame bursting mode (in the router) to see what that does?
Did you try changing the wireless channel? Perhaps there are other networks in the neighbourhood interfering.

 

[The_Fonz]

Hi,

I have one more thing. You should read the review on the Linksys WRT54GS which also uses Afterburner, it's interesting and might give you some ideas.
It says that the speedadvantage quickly disappears with growing distance. So how far away are your clients from the router?

 

[frankienyc123]

Ive looked at all my settings and they all apear to be correct. It seems on both computers the desktop and laptop if I enable afterburner I lose about 50% of my speed. The onlyu differance is that the desktop is showing a high speed mode connectioon of 125mbs and the laptop shows only a max of 54mbs but then drops down to 11mbs after a few minutes.

Ive checked and rechecked my settings on the AP and client cards and they seem to be setup correctly. When I turn afterburner of on either computer the performance goes way up. Ive checked to see if any of my neighbors have AP's that are interfering and I only pick up one other connection but its on a differant channel and the signal is very low. There are no other clients besides these two computers and ive treid running diagnostics and I tried fram burting mode but it wasnt much differant in performance to the a125mbs hsm. The only way I get anywhere near the performance my 15/2 connection is capable is with afterburner turned off.

This has really gotten my stumped and Im not sure what to do. im going to contact Belkin and see what they say. If they cant solve the problem, ive been wanting to upgrade to a better router anyway so maybe nows a good time. Any reccomendations that will let me take advabntage of the full capabilitys of my fast cable connection? Im looking at the Netgear 240 rangemax as it seems to offer the best performance right now. Euither that or run a ethernet cable up to my room for the desktop and suffer with a 6/1.5 wireless connection on the laptiop.

 

[Iceblue]

..I have a 15down/2up cable connection...The only way I get anywhere near the performance my 15/2 connection is capable is with afterburner turned off.... Any reccomendations that will let me take advabntage of the full capabilitys of my fast cable connection? ....

To answer your last question, yes. Run normal 802.11g 54Mbps. Even at 25% efficiency (about right for wireless), you have a LAN throughput of 13.5Mbps. That is probably higher than your true download speed (do you actually GET 15Mbps??), and is certainly faster than your service provider's claimed upload speed of 2Mbps.

What am I missing here?

 

[frankienyc123]

I have a 15down 2mb up cable connection and yes when i use a wired connection I do get those speeds. When I go wirelss with afterburner enabled I get a max of 2down /1up but when I turn off afterburner it shoots up to between 6-8down and 1.5up. So I want to know why afterburner which is supposed to increase your speed is doing just the opposite. MY freind has the same cable connection and he gets almost he full 15/2 even when using his wirelss router. So I want to know why Im not even getting a quarter of that speed with afterburner on?? Shouldnt afterburner give me better perfomance than regular G? I mean its not that my connection is slow even when its doing only 2/1 but I paid extra for the "high speed mode" and its not doing anything except making my connection slower.

 

[Iceblue]

I have a 15down 2mb up cable connection and yes when i use a wired connection I do get those speeds. When I go wirelss with afterburner enabled I get a max of 2down /1up but when I turn off afterburner it shoots up to between 6-8down and 1.5up. So I want to know why afterburner which is supposed to increase your speed is doing just the opposite. MY freind has the same cable connection and he gets almost he full 15/2 even when using his wirelss router. So I want to know why Im not even getting a quarter of that speed with afterburner on?? Shouldnt afterburner give me better perfomance than regular G? I mean its not that my connection is slow even when its doing only 2/1 but I paid extra for the "high speed mode" and its not doing anything except making my connection slower.

I'm not a big fan of the proprietary wireless speed up approaches. They are fussy, non-standard, and tend to not work reliabily. Since that is MY view (YMMV), I have little first-hand experience to offer to help. But I would ask: Why is your standard 802.11g wirless connection so slow? Answer that question, and you may find the answer to your goosed wireless issues. Again, standard 54Mbps wireless should be able to keep up with your claimed 15 Mbps dowloads.

 

[The_Fonz]

Did you look at the distance and the signalstrengths of the adapters. The 125Mbps and 11Mbps you talk about are the numbers that theoretically go with the strength of the signal the adapter receives. Perhaps the adapter of the desktop is stronger than the one in the notebook or the notebook is further away from the router, or behind an obstacle.
High speed needs a stronger signal to keep going than standard 54Mbps. That could be the explanation why sometimes you get better speed with High Speed turned off, even if that seems strange.
I don't know if it's really the cause of your problems but you could try to locate the notebook close (within 6 feet) to the router to see what happens.

By the way, you have a really fast cable connection speed!

 

[frankienyc123]

I tried using placing the notebook right next to the router and with high speed mode enabled I still only get an 11mbs connection and the online bandwith testd show around 2.5/1mbs. When I do the same with high speed mode turned off I get much faster speeds about 11down/2up which is almost equal to what I get with a wired connection. The signal strenth with both the notebook and desktop both say excellent and signal to noise ratio is very good on both. Im really thinking of just unning a wire to my desktop it wouldnt be that much work the router is almost directly one floor below the desktop. And I dont reallyu mind a slower speed on my notebook. So un less I figure this out in the next few days thats what ill do. Personally Ive never used a wireless connection that was as fast and responsive as a wired one. Eve when the speeds show the same the wired connection usually seems to react quicker? I guess thats the price you pay for conveinance? Thanks
Frank

 

[Iceblue]

Personally Ive never used a wireless connection that was as fast and responsive as a wired one. Eve when the speeds show the same the wired connection usually seems to react quicker? I guess thats the price you pay for conveinance? Thanks
Frank

Sure, of course. It's been a long time since 10BASE-T was the hottest thing in wired ethernet. But at 10Mbps, 10BASE-T was still faster than 802.11b wireless, which claims 11Mbps, with with overhead is barely half that (if that much). Now, with 100Mbps ethernet being the common everyday wired network, that is easily 3 or 4 times faster than 802.11g (54Mbps less overhead). If you really want to scream on your wire, upgrade to 1000Mbps - so called gigabit.

All I was saying was your 15Mbps download speed is very fast for broadband, but not very impressive compared with LAN speeds, and just margnially faster than 11g WiFi, as you have discovered.

Have you checked the Belkin site to be sure all your firmware in your wireless devices (router, adaptors) is up to the latest?

 

[frankienyc123]

Ok so I treid to move my AO to a better spot and it helped. With afterburner turned off im now getting speeds of around 11down/1.7up on both the dektop and notebook when I test on Speakeasy speed test and Optimum onnlines speed test. But if i turn afterburner on the speed gets cut in half. I guess for the internet the non afterburner 54g connection is fine since I can get almost the full speed of my internet connection. But id really like to get the extra speed of afterburners 125mbs connection for sending large files on my home network. I use my notebook which is an older 1.1duron 768mb system for doing all my downloading and virus scan all files before sending them to my desktop in case a downloaded file is infected it will only take out my notebook which i dont care about as much as my desktop. So Im always sending large files over the network and that 30% extra speed afterburner is supposed to give would be really nice.

 

[Iceblue]

Like is said above, I have no experience with the proprietary speed boosters, so this is generic advice. Maybe someone who has actually used the equipment you are using will eventually join in here.

This is help diagnosing the problem (not solving it), but hopefully the results will begin to point to what is going on.

First, turn off everything except your router (keep the internet connection live) and one computer with wireless. Turn off all wired computers and any other wireless computers. With just that simple "network", test your speeds with standard 802.11g and then with your afterburner features enabled. If even this simple system slows down, then you have something seriously amiss. I "think" (caveat - my inexperience with the boosted wireless) these systems will slow down if they detect standard or 11b clients. Are there any of those within range of your network?

If this simple system is slow, then try turning off the computer you just tested and turn on a different client. How does that perform?

If this simple system does run at boosted speed, they try turning on another wireless client. If the system slows to a crawl then, then there are a couple of possibilities... maybe the wireless card in the machine you just turned on is defective or not in the high speed mode... maybe the router is becoming overloaded (cheap processor?) and can't keep up with more than one high speed client.

Basic guideline: make as simple a network as you can and see if that works. If not, then the number of things that could be wrong is simplified. If it does work, then continue to make the network more complete until it finally falls over.

 

[The_Fonz]

I've read today that some routers may have problems with the power saving mode of notebooks, especially when you're working on the battery. Have you tried disabling or altering the power saving mode of the wifi adapter, just to see what happens?

I recently bought a new router and also had some problems with the performance, not as bad as you but still I find it annoying.
But tonight I solved the performance problems with the notebook by adjusting the power saving settings.

 

[frankienyc123]

I checked the power settings its all good. Im getting fgood internet speed of 12/2mb with the afterburner turned off. But I just cant get afterburner to work correctly on either my notebook or desktop. I think i am going to just run a wire to my desktop anyways. My other desktop downstairs is wired and both have gigabit lan so if I get a router thats gigbit capable I shouldt have any trouble with speed between the two desktops. Though the notebook ill have to suffer with the 54mbs connection which isnt such a big deal, as long as the inernet is fast which it is, its ok. I just dont like the fact that i paid extra for the 54g-plus which is supposed to give you a 125mbs connection and I am not getting the extra speed. I would have bought the less expensive 7230 router which doesnt have the high speed mode if I knew it wouldnt work.

Well I guerss im going back to wired connection for my desktop. Anyone want to reccomend a good wired router that is gigabit compatible??