E4200 2.0.37 wireless dropping

[bongobuda]

Hi guys, I need some help with my e4200 wireless. I have internet connection speed of 40mb and I have epc 3925 working in bridged mode as modem and E4200 as router. When I connect my laptop with wire on e4200 I am getting 37-38 Mbps on speedtest.net which is perfectly fine. But on wireless I am having a lot of dropping of speed: I have 2mps then jumping to 5-6 Mbps and so on it never goes more than 5-6 Mbps. When I disable WMM Support in QoS I am having perfectly constant 20mbps but... I have only g network 54mbps.

My settings are:

5GHz: wireless n only, wpa2 personal, channel width: 40Mhz only, channel: auto.

2.4GHz: mixed,  wpa2 personal,  channel width: auto, chanel: auto. 

I tried bunch of suggestions I found here like Wireless_Advanced.asp I changed:

Beacon Interval: 50

Fragmentation Threshold: 2307

RTS Threshold: 2306

It is extremely frustrating for me, can anybody help me how to set up proper wireless.

thanks a million :-)  

[jaymay]

For your 2.4 GHz wireless settings, I would suggest that you change the channel width to 20mhz only and set the channel to either 1,3,6 or 9. Create a unique name as well for both the networks.

[bongobuda]

Sorry forgot to mention, I do have different SSID's for 2.4 and 5 GHz networks. Tried changing channels on 2.4 as suggested and found that I have some improvement on channel 9, but it is still not very constant. When I test speed on speedtest.net speed is constantly going up and down something like 2 Mbps then 20 Mbps then 5mbps then 25 Mbps... and so on.

When I disable WMM Support in QoS I have very constant speed of 20-22 Mbps. Before I had 20 Mbps speed from my ISP and old tp-link G router - I had very constant wireless speed of 18-19 Mbps, when I upgraded speed from ISP to 40 Mbps I bought E 4200 so I can match speed on wireless. I have big troubles setting it up to work properly.

[Ricewind]

According to the scenario that you mentioned what you can try is to lower down the security level of the wireless network. Here is the link for the same: http://www6.nohold.net/Cisco2/ukp.aspx?vw=1&docid=cfb50c0dc992443ab2405a782cca60f7_19073.xml&pid=80&...

[chica-dora]

does your laptop have a wireless-N network adapter? if so, you can set the wireless network mode of both the 5 and 2.4ghz network to Wireless-N only. This is to maximize the capacity of your wireless network.

[bongobuda]

Since I am using n-only I have option for WPA2 Personal or WPA2 Enterprise, I am using WPA2 Personal currently I tried to remove security completely. It didn't make any difference at all, everything remained exactly the same, according to today's measures I cannot get more than 9Mbps on either 5GHz or 2.4GHz, disabling WMM support I am getting very constant 20-21Mbps...

Any other ideas I really appreciate

[hillary681]

are you using the WMM feature for anything in particular? if not, then i suggest you leave it set to disabled.

as far as security is concerned, the best security mode you can use is WPA2 Personal with AES encryption. this should give you the best transfer rates. leaving your network open is not recommended. btw, have you tried WPA2/WPA mixed mode?

[chica-dora]

yeah, hillary681 does have a point. if you don't have any particular reason for enabling WMM, then might as well disable it.

[bongobuda]

Thanks guys for all suggestions, I have couple of things:

1. I tried WPA2/WPA mixed mode, no difference at all, so I just left WPA2 Personal, not sure though is it AES encryption as I am not sure how to check that.

2. I am definitely not using WMM, and I am keeping it off all the time, but my issue is: I cannot connect to my 5GHz network any more (as it is N-only) I can only use 2.4GHz in G mode (54Mbps). So basically wrap up is I had with old setup 20Mbps line from my ISP and I had wireless speed with my old G router 19Mbps. Now I upgraded speed with my ISP to 40Mbps and bought new E4200 in order to use N wireless, when I disabled WMM I am still on G network with wireless speed of 20 - 21 Mbps. So I upgraded in reality my speed just 1-2 Mbps... I was hopping with all that setup that I would have at least 30-31 Mbps with regular N wireless network, I cannot believe that this is standard to everybody. Only option left is to stick wire from E4200 to my laptop, then I can get 38-39 Mbps speed, but that is so inconvenient for me as router is in the middle of the house.

I really, really appreciate all the help from everybody.    

[hillary681]

no problem bongobuda!

WPA2 personal on the E4200 actually defaults to AES encryption so you have the security part all set.

as for being able to connect to the 5Ghz network, does your PC have a dual-band adapter? seems to me that it's a plain G adapter, in which case you can't ever connect to the 5Ghz network. i don't know exactly how you got 19Mbps on wireless initially but with your new 40Mbps subscription, wireless working @ 20-21Mbps is within range. in fact, wireless connections may only work about a third of the wired connection's speed!

have you tried updating the driver of your wireless adapter? it might help with the speed issues. you can do an automatic windows driver update or get the device- specific drivers for your wireless adapter.