Hi everyone,
I am having a strange issue that is the reverse of what I had a couple of weeks ago. Now I can't seem to get decent wireless throughput on my D-Link router (which previously worked fine) OR my Netgear router with DD-WRT (though that same router is fast with the stock firmware).
If you saw the thread about recapping my WNDR3700, you might want to skip the next four paragraphs as I recap (no pun intended).
I recently discovered that my wireless throughput on my Netgear WNDR3700v1 was not what it should be. I'd been using the 3700 without issue for years, but never really had any reason to consider wireless throughput (I was using it for internet only) until I decided to set up a computer to act as a NAS for backups for the laptop (wireless) and desktop (wired).
As part of the troubleshooting process, I hooked up my D-Link DIR-825 A1, and it instantly outperformed the Netgear by a factor of 4 to 1 in actual throughput with the same reported link speed (300Mbps). No combination of settings would make the Netgear any faster.
The Netgear firmware has long been reputed to be full of bugs, even though I personally have never had any problems with it, so I was thinking that's where the issue was. I posted about it on the Netgear forum, and the person there clued me in on what should have been obvious-- hardware failure.
I was not a registered user here, but I've been reading this forum for years, so immediately my mind went to capacitors. Lo and behold, upon opening the unit, I found three bulged electrolytics. With the help of some great people here, I got some replacements ordered, and as soon as they arrived, I installed them. As soon as I turned it back on, the router was back up to the speed where it should have been.
Just yesterday, though, I had a recurrence of an issue I thought had been resolved. My laptop uses the Intel 4965AGN wireless card (mini PCIE), a card Intel EOL'd years ago. The latest driver for it is about five years old, and apparently even then contained a bug that Intel has written about being fixed in the newest drivers. I can't confirm it is the same bug, but the symptoms I am experiencing are identical to what Intel describes, and fixing it in drivers that no longer support my wireless NIC does not help me (though I have wondered if editing the .inf might work as it does with some mobile graphics cards).
The issue is that during periods of high bandwidth use on wireless, like copying a large file or doing a backup, the wireless link loses connectivity. The tray icon on the laptop gets the little ! indicating that it has no internet access, and Windows keeps trying to copy the file, even though the throughput has dropped to nil. It's not just the internet that has lost any throughput... it is the whole wireless connection. I am not able to access the router's configuration interface or that of the DSL modem from the laptop when it is doing this, but I can see them from the wired desktop (so I know the router is still working). If I disable the wireless card and re-enable it via the laptop button, it sometimes gets some throughput back, but it is slow and flaky until the laptop is rebooted.
I never had that happen with the D-Link in the week or so I was using it (though I have also not had it happen with the Netgear post-recapping until now), so I decided to try it again and let it download some massive files (backup files on external HDD) and see if I could make it fail. The driver bug on the laptop is supposedly only triggered when paired with certain routers, though that remains to be verified.
The thing is, even though that router is still configured exactly as it was when it was outperforming the Netgear with the bad caps, it no longer has that great throughput it did before. Actual throughput dropped down to 2MB/s, about 1/7th or 1/8th of what it was before, even though the link speed was reported as 300 Mbps (the maximum) as it was previously.
I opened the D-Link, expecting to find more bulged caps, but nope! They were Chemi-Cons, looking just as nice as the ones I just put in the 3700. Kudos to D-Link for using good caps... unlike the Ltecs in my Netgear and the Su'scons in my LG monitor!
I decided to try DD-WRT again on the 3700, with the new caps. It delivered the same performance as the D-Link! I changed settings all over the place, but nothing I did got it to perform as the D-Link had before, or as it did with the stock firmware.
I booted a Live USB thumb drive with Linux Mint on it on the laptop, and the throughput was the same there as it was in Windows.
I verified that mine is still the only network on the A band, so if there is interference, it's not from a WLAN.
I flashed my Netgear back to the stock firmware and the speed is back up again. It really does not make any sense to me!
The only thing I can even hypothesize is that hauling the old D-Link out of storage and using it intensively for a week or so (while I waited for the new caps to arrive) did something to the long-unused caps in the D-Link that didn't show up at that point, but after I let it cool again, they failed without bulging (even good ones can dry out)... and coincidentally, DD-WRT in its current build just didn't work well on my router and caused it to have the same symptom. It doesn't seem likely that two completely dissimilar problems would just happen to come together like that (and match the same issue I had with the Netgear that had me recapping it)... but what else is there?
I don't have any other wireless devices that operate in the A band to test. I have an Android tablet and an old laptop (keep in mind that my "new" laptop was manufactured in 2008) that are both b/g items, so their throughput is terrible at best anyway.
Does anyone know of a diagnostic utility that could tell if I am getting a lot of retransmissions of packets, which could be causing the slow throughput despite the maximum link rate?
Thanks!
I am having a strange issue that is the reverse of what I had a couple of weeks ago. Now I can't seem to get decent wireless throughput on my D-Link router (which previously worked fine) OR my Netgear router with DD-WRT (though that same router is fast with the stock firmware).
If you saw the thread about recapping my WNDR3700, you might want to skip the next four paragraphs as I recap (no pun intended).
I recently discovered that my wireless throughput on my Netgear WNDR3700v1 was not what it should be. I'd been using the 3700 without issue for years, but never really had any reason to consider wireless throughput (I was using it for internet only) until I decided to set up a computer to act as a NAS for backups for the laptop (wireless) and desktop (wired).
As part of the troubleshooting process, I hooked up my D-Link DIR-825 A1, and it instantly outperformed the Netgear by a factor of 4 to 1 in actual throughput with the same reported link speed (300Mbps). No combination of settings would make the Netgear any faster.
The Netgear firmware has long been reputed to be full of bugs, even though I personally have never had any problems with it, so I was thinking that's where the issue was. I posted about it on the Netgear forum, and the person there clued me in on what should have been obvious-- hardware failure.
I was not a registered user here, but I've been reading this forum for years, so immediately my mind went to capacitors. Lo and behold, upon opening the unit, I found three bulged electrolytics. With the help of some great people here, I got some replacements ordered, and as soon as they arrived, I installed them. As soon as I turned it back on, the router was back up to the speed where it should have been.
Just yesterday, though, I had a recurrence of an issue I thought had been resolved. My laptop uses the Intel 4965AGN wireless card (mini PCIE), a card Intel EOL'd years ago. The latest driver for it is about five years old, and apparently even then contained a bug that Intel has written about being fixed in the newest drivers. I can't confirm it is the same bug, but the symptoms I am experiencing are identical to what Intel describes, and fixing it in drivers that no longer support my wireless NIC does not help me (though I have wondered if editing the .inf might work as it does with some mobile graphics cards).
The issue is that during periods of high bandwidth use on wireless, like copying a large file or doing a backup, the wireless link loses connectivity. The tray icon on the laptop gets the little ! indicating that it has no internet access, and Windows keeps trying to copy the file, even though the throughput has dropped to nil. It's not just the internet that has lost any throughput... it is the whole wireless connection. I am not able to access the router's configuration interface or that of the DSL modem from the laptop when it is doing this, but I can see them from the wired desktop (so I know the router is still working). If I disable the wireless card and re-enable it via the laptop button, it sometimes gets some throughput back, but it is slow and flaky until the laptop is rebooted.
I never had that happen with the D-Link in the week or so I was using it (though I have also not had it happen with the Netgear post-recapping until now), so I decided to try it again and let it download some massive files (backup files on external HDD) and see if I could make it fail. The driver bug on the laptop is supposedly only triggered when paired with certain routers, though that remains to be verified.
The thing is, even though that router is still configured exactly as it was when it was outperforming the Netgear with the bad caps, it no longer has that great throughput it did before. Actual throughput dropped down to 2MB/s, about 1/7th or 1/8th of what it was before, even though the link speed was reported as 300 Mbps (the maximum) as it was previously.
I opened the D-Link, expecting to find more bulged caps, but nope! They were Chemi-Cons, looking just as nice as the ones I just put in the 3700. Kudos to D-Link for using good caps... unlike the Ltecs in my Netgear and the Su'scons in my LG monitor!
I decided to try DD-WRT again on the 3700, with the new caps. It delivered the same performance as the D-Link! I changed settings all over the place, but nothing I did got it to perform as the D-Link had before, or as it did with the stock firmware.
I booted a Live USB thumb drive with Linux Mint on it on the laptop, and the throughput was the same there as it was in Windows.
I verified that mine is still the only network on the A band, so if there is interference, it's not from a WLAN.
I flashed my Netgear back to the stock firmware and the speed is back up again. It really does not make any sense to me!
The only thing I can even hypothesize is that hauling the old D-Link out of storage and using it intensively for a week or so (while I waited for the new caps to arrive) did something to the long-unused caps in the D-Link that didn't show up at that point, but after I let it cool again, they failed without bulging (even good ones can dry out)... and coincidentally, DD-WRT in its current build just didn't work well on my router and caused it to have the same symptom. It doesn't seem likely that two completely dissimilar problems would just happen to come together like that (and match the same issue I had with the Netgear that had me recapping it)... but what else is there?
I don't have any other wireless devices that operate in the A band to test. I have an Android tablet and an old laptop (keep in mind that my "new" laptop was manufactured in 2008) that are both b/g items, so their throughput is terrible at best anyway.
Does anyone know of a diagnostic utility that could tell if I am getting a lot of retransmissions of packets, which could be causing the slow throughput despite the maximum link rate?
Thanks!
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