12/19/14 11:03 AM

With our recent move, we bought a new wireless router to go with the new cable modem. Things are much faster than with our old DSL connection. Good.

I recently visited my mother-in-law and her cable modem had crapped out. We had the cable company replace the modem. I tried connecting my year-old Dell laptop directly to the cable modem but could not get a reliable connection. I installed a cheap Belkin wireless router and things worked fine. Download speeds of 45-50 Mbps and upload speeds of 4.5 Mbps.

This led me to double check my home speeds and found download speeds of 9 Mbps and upload speeds of 4.5 Mbps. Things were not only out of whack (usually download is 10x upload speed) but much lower speed than I was supposed to have. A visit from a cable company technician was not able to sort it out - direct connection of the technician's laptop to the cable modem showed 50 Mbps. So the message is "it's your router/laptop."

So now I'm back at the MIL's house and brought my wireless router with me thinking that I would leaver her the alleged crappy router and take her good router. Guess what, the router that gives me about 9 Mbps at home gives me 45 Mbps here. I'm going to take her router and my router back home and see what happens, but my current expectation that both routers, when installed at my home, will perform the same and not up to snuff.

First question: what might be the cause of this?

Second question: how do I get the cable company to address this?

12/19/14 11:30 AM

get a wireless modem. The cable company can provide it if you rent your modem or you can buy one and not pay rent.

I bought a xoom and its nice having it all in 1 box, with the wireless code written on the back of the modem.

If you rent it from the cable company, the burden is on them. After they get it sorted out you can buy your own.

12/19/14 11:44 AM

Is there a firmware update for your home's modem or router? Or a driver update for your laptop (less likely from your description)? The idea is to make one device more compatible with the other.

At home...
The laptop being too close to the wireless router may result in a slower/weaker signal, too,

Are there other electronic devices that might cause some interference, too?

Find the right/different wireless channel. Your neighbors wi-fi signal may be in interfering with yours. Use a tool like Wi-Fi Stumbler or Wi-Fi Analyzer to find the perfect channel in your house.

12/19/14 6:28 PM

I'll look into whether the cable company has wireless modems. That would put the whole burden on them.

When I get both wireless routers home (tomorrow) for a test I will see whether there is a difference in performance between them. If there is then that might suggest updates are in order.

However, since both the Belkin and the Netgear routers give the same (high) performance at my MIL's home it's hard to understand how they will be different in my home. The cable modems and both wireless routers are all about 2 months old.

One detail that I left out is that my wife's Mac laptop, located 25 feet away from the wireless router has the same speed measurements as my Dell laptop located right next to the wireless router. And when I take my laptop somewhere else in the house, it has the same download speed as when it is located right next to the wireless router.

I'll try the tools to analyze the Wi-Fi signal. I'll report back when I've done that (probably tomorrow evening).

12/19/14 7:19 PM

Are there multiple or different USB version ports involved. It sounds like a hop is going across a bridge that is causing a bottleneck.

12/19/14 8:03 PM

quote:

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Are there multiple or different USB version ports involved. It sounds like a hop is going across a bridge that is causing a bottleneck.

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12/19/14 11:56 PM

Try connecting directly to modem with your 10baseT port/cable. If low though put, then:

Try going into the your lap top Ethernet setting and try diddling the setting for both full and half duplex for the Ethernet interface in your laptop.

Also there may be a setting for both 100MB and 10MB and auto speed. Try setting to each other than manually and testing though put each way.


Are you getting slow speed via wireless and not connected directly. If yes, then try setting the wireless router and PC adapter setting to use different channel#.

Also, try turning the power mngmt to the PC wireless adapter to no power management.

12/20/14 7:53 PM

OK, lots of things to look into.

But the key question remains: why does the wireless router work fine with the cable modem at my MIL's house but not with the cable modem at my house? Any why is the download 5X slower but the upload speed is the same? Does that fact narrow down the search?

12/20/14 8:17 PM

Those are good questions. I think you have the right approach. At this point I'm getting lost tracking the many details. Have you tried measuring the connectivity speeds using your home computer connected directly (wired) to the cable modem? That is, can we rule out it is an issue specifically with the combination of your computer + your cable modem? If so, that will narrow things down to solely a problem with and device interfacing with your router, correct?

Also, have you checked under the hood/admin settings of your router? Typically typing in the address http://192.168.1.1 will get you to the admin site.

Last edited by Jesus Saves on 12/20/14 8:26 PM; edited 1 time in total

12/20/14 8:25 PM

I've heard some reports of issues with incompatibility between certain brands of router/modem. So if it turns out one router has higher speed than the other, you might have just one of such situations. Keep the one that gives you the max speed and take the other one back to your MIL's house!

Kerry, you've got a very systematic approach and it sounds like you've got the issue cornered once you put the two routers next to each other and hooked up to the modem.

12/21/14 8:12 PM

When I got back home yesterday I tried using the Belkin wireless router (from my MIL) but it didn't talk to the cable modem. I hooked my Netgear wireless router back into the cable modem and it took a couple of tries to get things working again (cable modem, wireless router, and laptop restarted 2X). Same speed as before - about 9 Mbps download and 4.5 Mps upload. Rats!

But overnight I got to thinking that maybe I just needed to restart things again to get the Belkin wireless router recognized by my cable modem, and sure enough that worked. Ran the speed test and got 55 Mbps on my laptop, and 65 Mbps on my wife's (much newer) Apple laptop.

So as April suggested, the Netgear is somehow a problem with the cable modem we have (Arris) but works fine with my MIL's cable modem (Cisco). The Belkin works fine with both cable modems.

So we're all sorted and the Netgear is going to my MIL.

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm sure glad I didn't have to schedule another technician visit from the cable company, and I wonder what it might be that a new Netgear wireless router wouldn't play nice with a new cable modem.

12/22/14 7:47 AM

Great. One last thing...have you visited the netgear support website to see if there is a firmware update for your router? If so, I would give the firmware update a try before swapping the router outright. If everything is hooked up already it is worth a try.

12/22/14 7:49 AM

the built-in wifi on my work-issued lenovo x220 laptop has really spotty connectivity to our netgear router. so i use an aftermarket USB dongle that connects fine to eliminate the irritation/frustration.

whereas the built-in wifi on my personal lenovo x130e laptop has great connectivity to the same netgear router.

it happens. i'm sure it's down to coding shortcuts or poor standards-adherence in the various chipsets and firmware that combine to create this. sorta like in manufactured stuff where tolerance variations can stack up in a particular example of some widget assembly...all of the individual piece-parts are all in-spec, but together sometimes the whole assembled gizmo just doesnt work as intended. <shrug>

Last edited by walter on 12/23/14 2:05 PM; edited 1 time in total

12/22/14 8:39 AM

Agree. In this case, the current equation is:

old hardware (router) + new hardware (modem) + new hardware (laptop) = problem

Updating the software (firmware) on the old hardware, the router, may favorably change the equation.

12/22/14 8:47 PM

Both of the wireless routers are pretty new (Netgear purchased 10-10-14, Belkin purchased 11-17-14). Of course that doesn't mean the Netgear has the latest version firmware. Likewise the cable modems are new: Arris in my home installed 10-10-14 and the Cisco in my MIL's home installed 11-17-14.

The "failure" is certainly between the Netgear and the Arris cable modem. Both my Dell laptop and my wife's MacBook Pro experience the slow download speeds with that combination. When the Negear is connected to the Cisco cable modem, all is good. And when the Belkin is connected to the Arris modem, likewise.

So I won't investigate further. The Netgear is going to my MIL where it will work just fine and the Belkin stays with me, where it works fine.

12/23/14 10:15 AM

Glad it worked out for you. Technology has definitely made our lives easier, but sometimes dealing with it is an exercise in patience.