intermittent internet loss and slow speed

[unclecol]

I have two problems with my wireless lan which are becoming increasingly annoying...please help!

The setup is a wireless router (siemens) hooked up to broadband, a desktop wired to the router and a laptop with wireless card. More info if needed and when I get home tonight...

1. Losing internet connection on the laptop. This tends to happen after a period of inactivity and will prevent me logging on to the web or to the router via explorer. Repeated attempts to load a page will usually eventually (up to 5minutes) result in a connection, tho sometimes a router reboot is necessary. The wireless connection itself is fine and I can talk to the other computer. I checked the router settings and it is set to log off only after 60min of inactivity (the max) but the problems occur well before that.

2. Low connection speeds. It's an 11Mbit system but even when simply transferring files between the computers, it maxes out at about 200kbps. I expected about 5 at least. Switching off other 2.4GHz devices and placing receiver/transmitter v. close to each other does not really affect the speed. Signal strength is consistently above 90%.

thanks for any suggestions
Colin

[unclecol]

are there any freeware 'remote desktop' type controllers out there? (i.e. so I can control one computer with the other) would it be useable at 11Mbps and with older computers (700Mhz and 1GHz)?

[M/Q]

Some quick thoughts come to mind. Do you have SSID broadcasting turned off? If so turn it back on. Also are you using Windows Zero Configuration Utility? If so, try using the drivers client utility instead and disable the windows version.

http://www.tightvnc.com/

http://www.realvnc.com/

http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/

[unclecol]

thanks for the tips & links, unfortunately...

turning ssid visibility didn't make any difference...and as for the zero configuration facility, I haven't got as clue what that is, so presumably I'm not using it (both systems are win me).

more info - the hardwired desktop has no problems connecting to the internet, and I just realised that when internet access on the laptop is working, it does actually get up to 450mbs which is quite reasonable. so why is a simple file transfer so slow?

[M/Q]

Hmmmm. Something is not quite right, I think maybe you meant kb/sec I hope? You kind of changed problems mid stream here. Or I need you to redefine what the problem/s are. It is somewhat confusing. You also may want to use this site to check the speeds, if you are not using a site dedicated to just that type of thing. If you are already, I apologize.

http://www.dslreports.com/stest?loc=1

[unclecol]

okay, sorry about the confusion, I'll try to clarify.

Problem 1 (internet access) still stands. Every now and again, the laptop loses internet connection and takes a while to hook up again. This never happens with the hardwired desktop, and the LAN functions throughout (i.e. the other computer can be accessed, but not the internet).

Problem 2 turns out to be merely a problem with transferring files between computers, because I have managed to acheive up to 450kbs wifi transfer rate on the laptop whilst downloading from the internet. However, simply copying (e.g. with windows explorer) from one computer to the other trundles along at 100-200kbs (has never approached even 300, usually 100kbs).

I haven´t used that speed monitor because it's just internet connection speed, instead I just use the wifi system tray icon which gives details about signal strength (always very good) and transmit/receive speeds.

I have also in the meantime played with different channels and mtu(? - max packet size thingy, set at 1492) which doesn't affect anything...

now it's all crystal, I hope :-I

[DarkCelebi]

Okay... here are a couple of tips:

1) VNC is the way to go for controlling the other desktop. There are different flavors of it, but I tend to stick to the original at:

http://www.realvnc.com/

2) Try not to use Windows Explorer to transfer files. Find a freeware FTP server that you can use instead. I have found that even in wired networks, using FTP or some other transfer protocol, you can gain speed over using Windows Explorer.

I used to have a similar problem with my setup, in that the connection speeds were great to the internet, but absolutely horrible from laptop to desktop. One way I got around that was to upgrade to Wireless-G, but that's not the point here.

Using Samba (I run a linux server at home), and WinExplorer, I would get between 100 and 200 kbps transfer rates. Using FTP to that same box, I would get 400 - 500 k/sec. It made a huge difference for me.