Slow router at home

[Big Nate]

OK I just got a new Cisco Valet M20.

Everything has been working great until my broth moved in with his PS3 i got a PS3 and my son got an Xbox. The wireless slowed down a lot and began to drop netflix streams and such (not that big of a deal that is a lot for just one router). The issue came when we tried to hardwire the Ps3 and found that the speed the router was allow is the same as it being wireless. I used the site http://www.speedtest.net/index.php come up with my data. I had download speed of around 7.4 and uploads around 2.5 when connected wireless. I had no difference when connected wired.

What could be the issue?
I will be doing a firmware update tonight and another test to see if that help.

Any help would be great.

 

[Picklz]

OK I just got a new Cisco Valet M20.

Everything has been working great until my broth moved in with his PS3 i got a PS3 and my son got an Xbox. The wireless slowed down a lot and began to drop netflix streams and such (not that big of a deal that is a lot for just one router). The issue came when we tried to hardwire the Ps3 and found that the speed the router was allow is the same as it being wireless. I used the site http://www.speedtest.net/index.php come up with my data. I had download speed of around 7.4 and uploads around 2.5 when connected wireless. I had no difference when connected wired.

What could be the issue?
I will be doing a firmware update tonight and another test to see if that help.

Any help would be great.

A speed Test is going to test the speed of your internet / WAN connection (from Comcast or Qwest or whomever). Generally speaking your internet connection is far slower than your local or LAN connection. That valet will do 100mbps wired and in an ideal situation on wireless N 150mbps or so, though 50-100 is more common. So either way it has more throughput than what a common internet connection is (8-16mbps) so its not likely you would see any difference between wireless and wired.

As for streaming being slower / choppy there are a few things you could look at try. The first question is when you are streaming netflix now are their other devices powered on that are on your network (other PS3's, Xbox's, PC's etc? If so what are they doing if anything? Does your brother have a Bittorrent client running or other downloads/uploads constantly running? Another thing you could try is disconnect everything but the xbox or ps3 that is streaming and see if there is still a problem. If there is you've ruled out any other devices in the house causing the issue. Someone else here (Jay I think) was having streaming issues with Comcast. When he ran a constant ping (command prompt > type 'ping 8.8.8.8 -t' without quotes) he was loosing packets (no response every once in a while) which certainly could cause issues.

I wouldn't think your bro moving in and adding consoles is the root cause, unless he's running a server / bittorrent / etc off his PC.

 

[Big Nate]

No bit torrent running.

I tried taking out the router out in going direct to the modem. Then I ran at 25-53 down and 13-26 up. So the router is the bottle neck. I am not sure how to test my LAN speed.

How can I run that test to check and see if i am dropping packets or not? (step by step please)

 

[Picklz]

I'm not a huge fan of those speed test websites but that's quite the difference, Did you try running Only your PC hooked to the router and running a speed test (everything else off/unplugged) and then direct to the modem?

You could check and see if there are any firmware updates for the router.

Are you running windows from the machine you are doing your testing / speed test from?

 

[Big Nate]

I have done all of those tests with just one pc and nothing else running or even powered on. Both the wired and the wireless tests.

Firmware has an update but the note for it say nothing about changing port settings or other stuff like that. It is very techy speak they use for most of that and i am not sure what it means so i could be wrong on this.

I ran tests with both windos 7 and ubuntu. Both are the same.

 

[Picklz]

Well if your seeing significantly slower speeds connected directly to the modem with 1 PC vs connected to the router directly with 1 PC then I would certainly look there first. Firmware update would be the first / easiest step to take since there is one available.