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Watchman~SPARTA~
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Watchman~SPARTA~ Newbie

Watchman~SPARTA~

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I have a (up to) 30mb fibre broadband deal with Virgin. This is a relatively recent upgrade from 10mb, which included one of their new 'superhub' combined modem / router.

 

Haven't paid huge attention to the performance but recent downloads, Arma 3 beta, Tombraider, Bioshock had download speeds from 1.2mb down to 76kb!!!

Running a speedcheck suggested I was getting 10-12mb download at best dropping to 1-2 mb during peak hours.

 

Today we had an engineer turn up to replace our TV box as we were getting problems with a few channels and whilst he was here he checked out the broadband, replaced the external connector and the internal cable to the router. He ran a speed test, that my wife saw and it gave a 23+mb indication. Great, all fixed! :thumbsup:

 

So I came home from work and ran a test myself and got 1.7mb, this was during peak hours but way below what Virgin advise as their peak-time throttling option. So I called their tech helpline. Interestingly, I've never exceeded the fair use policy, so in theory have never been subjected to traffic management.

 

I got an extremely helpful guy, he checked the area for known issues (there were none), ran a line test, remote logged onto my laptop and all seemed good: I watched as he repeatidly got 23+mb results, to various servers. So I went upstairs and tried on my PC, running simultaneous tests with the laptop. Both are wireless connected. The laptop repeatidly got 23+ but the PC couldn't get above 4.

By this time he's starting to suggest it's the pc, so rebooted in safe mode and ran again, getting 23+mb over several tests to different servers.

 

Having now established it's not the connection, he's running out of options without having to charge me but points out the likely problem is something on my PC sucking the bandwidth.

So shutting down obvious stuff like antivirus, skype, x-fire, I re-ran the tests but could only get around 9mb. ( I have just re-ran the test and got 2.87!)

 

Any ideas, what could be the problem program (s)?

I'm running Win 7 Home Premium, let me know what other info is of use, if anyone has any ideas.

Edited by Watchman~SPARTA~
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PANiC Newbie

PANiC

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1st thought is wifi issues, i never trust it one bit.

 

my dad recently moved from virgin to bt with their new fantastic reliable wifi best speeds bt homehub. speeds were horrendous so i told him to phone bt because it was taking minutes to load basic web pages if at all. at the end of a 1 hour session on the phone their tech support told him to upgrade his windows from Vista as that is the casue of the problems..... i stuck in a lan cable and problem solved.

 

ok so 2 points, dont trust the tech support guy (realise this is a diff company, just kidding anyway) and dont trust wifi.

 

is it possible at all to test with a cable?

 

if you are subject to traffic shaping the speed is a set figure, so it would not be going up and down, believe me i'm very familiar with VM traffic shaping :D , so i dont think it's shaping, and i dont really think VM fibre network struggles during peak times

 

grab something like WiFi Analyzer for your HTC and check what other routers are in your range and see if others are on the same channel.

 

doesn't suddenly go shit when your on a cordelss phone does it?

 

what wirelss device in the pc?

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Watchman~SPARTA~ Newbie

Watchman~SPARTA~

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Re-installed the adaptor & drivers, made no difference. It's a linksys W54g.

Yes, I can hook up a cable but will need to take the pc downstairs, so will try at the weekend, along with clean boot routine.

Will also get that analyser app & see what that throws up.

 

Don't think theirs a link to the cordless phones but I can test that. Obviously I was on the phone with the tech but the laptop was on the desk all the time & hitting 23+, whilst the pc struggled to 4.

 

My last option, only because it will be a cost is to get Virgin back and move the router to the study & hard wire the pc.

Will update at the weekend, if any improvements found.

Thanks for the help so far.

Edited by Watchman~SPARTA~
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NoScream~SPARTA~ Newbie

NoScream~SPARTA~

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For a test, hard wire the PC,

Make sure the Adaptor is set to auto obtain IP from router & speed test.

 

 

Right click NETWORK ICON on desktop

Properties

Change Adaptor settings

Right click the connection & Properties

Internet protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4)

Properties

 

Obtain IP automatically

Obtain DNS automatically

Click ok

ok

 

 

Open a browser, see if your connected, if not REBOOT

 

http://www.speedtest.net/

 

 

 

 

--------

 

Your router seems to be fine because your laptop works ok.

This also means your modem is ok from Virgin.

 

--------

 

IF the HARD WIRE works, then it's your wifi adaptor driver or software interacting with it !!!!! because

YOU SAY, that on a SAFE BOOT ALL is well, meaning that the HARDWARE is good.

 

 

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE from a NORMAL BOOT & SAFE MODE BOOT is

 

SAFE MODE LOADS NO third party drivers (only Microsoft default drivers)

Meaning THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE PROBLEM DRIVER or OTHER

 

 

Happy hunting that one.

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Watchman~SPARTA~ Newbie

Watchman~SPARTA~

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Ran WiFi analyser and although there's a little cross over on the range of channels covered by my router for the channels giving the best result I'm in the clear.

So I'm guessing that's just another tick in the wifi's ok box.

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peter~SPARTA~ Newbie

peter~SPARTA~

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your wifi reception is crap. I went thrue same hoops month ago.

To solve it i got this kit

http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Networks-200Mbps-Powerline-Adapters/dp/B008O52VN2/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1373044713&sr=1-1&keywords=on+networks+200mbps+powerline+home+network+adapters

 

Plug and forget about wire. Mine is slow, around 17 Mb/s(?) while isp (virgin) give us 50. Sometimes i can get 28Mbps with wifi, but ping and lag is too big to be usable for gaming. My room is one floor up and across staircase from virgin hub.

We had several outages of net. Guy who come cant find problem, he changed some kind of adapter(filter) between cable and media hub(thats how they call modem+wifi router) and its working for now. We had one outage last week when i was at work.

 

Btw. my Mbps reception change when i move my laptop for 1-3 ft and can vary from 3 to 49 Mbps in matters of bed lenght.

 

Tech laptop probably have better antena then your desktop .

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Luggage~SPARTA~ Newbie

Luggage~SPARTA~

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Don't forget he said that the card works well when he is in safe mode. This means that the reception is unlikely to be the cause, but points more towards a driver or programme issue somewhere. The clean boot is an arduous but necessary test plan, unless you are lazy like me and just go and get a different card and hope that fixes the clash.

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Watchman~SPARTA~ Newbie

Watchman~SPARTA~

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Okay, slightly crestfallen :(

Started the clean reboot process and following instructions, stopped all processes bar the MS ones. I rebooted expecting to get close to the expected 30mb and then begin the slow task of eliminating the 3rd party processes until I found the one causing the clash.

 

Rebooted, ran speedtest and got 3.69 down / 1.86 up. Ran on the laptop, which is on the desk next to me and got 24.7 down / 1.94 up.

 

So, does this mean my problem is with an MS driver or is it an issue elsewhere?

 

EDIT:

 

Forgot to mention, hardwired I'm getting 31.24 down / 1.95 up.

 

Question, with all the results I've been getting the upload speed has never really changed, always in the 1.8 - 1.97 range. The PC always matches the laptop in that instance. To me, I would have assumed I'd have degradation in both directions on the PC but then I know nothing.

Is there a genuine, logical answer to explain this?

Edited by Watchman~SPARTA~
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Watchman~SPARTA~ Newbie

Watchman~SPARTA~

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Update:

 

After spending most of today (so far) going through the clean boot routine to identify which 3rd party and MS services were causing the conflict, I've come up empty handed.

 

Although I got varying results from 3.25 to 15.67 download speeds, no one single process seemed to be the issue. During the whole time I routinely ran a reference scan with all processes enabled and got speeds close to those reported for the stage I was at. This tells me that at those times the processes that were disabled were actually having no affect and the apparent improvements were just coincidental with performance at the time of day.

I also ran scans on the laptop at various points during all of this work and it routinely registered 23+ mbps.

 

So, I'm none the wiser as to how to sort this, short of doing a complete wipe and re-install and hoping for a fix that way.

The fact that when ever I hard wire to the router I'm getting 30+ mbps, is actually making me think the simplest option is just to get a Virgin engineer back and pay to have the router wired to the study and connect straight to the pc.

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Watchman~SPARTA~ Newbie

Watchman~SPARTA~

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It's a Linksys WMP54G and current drivers (latest I can find) are 2.0.3.0.

However, Linksys don't actually list a Win7 specific driver but I've found a few posts about people not getting Win 7 to recognise this card in the early days of the OS and being pointed towards a Ralink (chipset manufacturer) download. I'm just in process of getting that now, to try out.

 

Edit:

 

The Ralink drivers made no difference

Edited by Watchman~SPARTA~
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Watchman~SPARTA~ Newbie

Watchman~SPARTA~

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Virgin are coming back in a week to install a new 'superhub 2' on a 60mb line and I'm going to get it put into the room with my pc, so I'll just stay hard wired.

 

Edit:

 

Engineer turned up, early and installed new line to study and shiney new Superhub 2. I'm now getting:

 

2842358102.png

 

Then on the laptop at the extremes of the use-able range I'm getting:

 

2842375377.png

 

That'll do nicely! :banana: :thumbsup: :winner_first:

Edited by Watchman~SPARTA~
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  • 2 weeks later...
Rocky Newbie

Rocky

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Frustrating times! I echo the virgin support, they really were pretty good with me when I was having issues too. Eventually we found that the cable running to the back of my PC had a short extension on it, and that connection had worked it's way ever so slightly loose.

 

Your 63Meg on a 60Meg service is typical, Virgin are quite obviously aiming to supply just over what the service level is, it causes great customer satisfaction. Even on mine 100Meg, if I test I get 105!

 

Glad you got yours fixed anyway, I know how frustrating it can be,.

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