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I have a Belkin Surf (N 300) wireless router and the rest of my non-LAN computers are plugged in with wireless N adapters. The computer I use the most, besides my main machine, has a Linksys WUSB300N adapter. Typically when the internet and network connections are idle it hovers in the 145Mbps-175Mbps range. As soon as I transfer files from this computer to my main computer the connection drops to 70Mbps-108Mbps. Why is this and is there anything I can do to fix it?

Things I've tried:
Updated firmware on router.
Installed latest drivers for USB adapter.
Installed adapter in ghetto modded strainer to boost signal.

*EDIT*
Does this have to do with the WPA2 encryption? Is it slowing the adapter so it can decrypt the file on my other computer?

*EDIT 2*
I tried using 128 bit WEP encryption and this made matters worse. Instead of my WLAN speed being in the upper 100s it topped out at 54Mbps (ala Wireless G mode). So as soon as I noticed that I put it back to WPA2.

Is the router fully 80211.N compliant or just "Draft N"?

Also, does it support 300Mbit in both directions?
Do you have any other devices connected via WiFi? Especially 802.11g devices? The router proly falls back to G mode then and can't do both G and N at the same time.

Also, windows (& Linux) is terrible for not reporting signal strenght and link speed incorrectly for WiFi.
It also doesn't account for packet loss, which is a major issue for wifi.
You might get a link reported as ~108Mbit but due to packet loss and interferance the throughput is usually a lot lower.
You should be checking signal quality via dB and not Mbit
something like Vistumbler can show this - simple free tool
There's other tools, but are not free and have limited chipset support on the adapter side.

kenc51 wrote:A:Is the router fully 80211.N compliant or just "Draft N"?

B:Also, does it support 300Mbit in both directions?

C:Do you have any other devices connected via WiFi? Especially 802.11g devices? The router proly falls back to G mode then and can't do both G and N at the same time.

D:Also, windows (& Linux) is terrible for not reporting signal strenght and link speed incorrectly for WiFi.
It also doesn't account for packet loss, which is a major issue for wifi.
You might get a link reported as ~108Mbit but due to packet loss and interferance the throughput is usually a lot lower.
You should be checking signal quality via dB and not Mbit
something like Vistumbler can show this - simple free tool
There's other tools, but are not free and have limited chipset support on the adapter side.

A: I believe it's full N not draft. If you get the time it's a Belkin Surf.

B: Don't know. Seems like it should though. I've seen it peak uploading to another computer in the lower 200Mbps range.

C: Yes but it wasn't connected to the network at that time. The router is set to broadcast in B, G, and N.

D: How do I check dB? I've seen it in Everest and it's reported as following:
WLAN Signal Strength -64 dBm (Very Good)
NIC status right now: 243Mbps Signal Strength: 4 out of 5 bars.
Thanks for the suggestion to Vistnumbler, I'll have to check it out later and report back.

Major_A wrote:I have a Belkin Surf (N 300) wireless router and the rest of my non-LAN computers are plugged in with wireless N adapters. The computer I use the most, besides my main machine, has a Linksys WUSB300N adapter. Typically when the internet and network connections are idle it hovers in the 145Mbps-175Mbps range. As soon as I transfer files from this computer to my main computer the connection drops to 70Mbps-108Mbps. Why is this and is there anything I can do to fix it?

Things I've tried:
Updated firmware on router.
Installed latest drivers for USB adapter.
Installed adapter in ghetto modded strainer to boost signal.

*EDIT*
Does this have to do with the WPA2 encryption? Is it slowing the adapter so it can decrypt the file on my other computer?

*EDIT 2*
I tried using 128 bit WEP encryption and this made matters worse. Instead of my WLAN speed being in the upper 100s it topped out at 54Mbps (ala Wireless G mode). So as soon as I noticed that I put it back to WPA2.

AFAIK WEP and 802.11n are not compatible. If the router is operating in mixed mode b/g/n then when you enabled WEP the adapter probably connected in g mode which is capped at 54Mbps.

I agree that the connection bitrates as Windows defines them are a rough guess at bes. When idle the connection is not transferring a large amount of data but when you start to transfer large amounts of data the calculations will start to drop.

Try transferring files the other direction and see if the problem remains. Also, I am disenchanted with USB adapters and manufacturer interoperability. I have a Netgear router and adapter that seem to work well together but with my previous b/g setup (also all Netgear) I threw out two USB adapters and got some noname PCI cards because of the same type of situation. They seemed to work fine until I started stressing them a bit and they would just drop packets like crazy until they stopped working altogether.

The wireless adapter wasn't that big of a deal with my old Wireless G router. Now that I'm using roughly half of the USB 2.0 bandwidth it seems to have issues. I agree that there is an inordinate amount of packet loss going on. Several times transferring a file to one of my other computers the transfer would just stall. Somehow throughout the transfer process it either fails or the adapter disappears forcing me to unplug the adapter and plug it back in. The only thing I haven't tried yet is a different USB port. Don't know why that would make any difference though.

Major_A wrote:The wireless adapter wasn't that big of a deal with my old Wireless G router. Now that I'm using roughly half of the USB 2.0 bandwidth it seems to have issues. I agree that there is an inordinate amount of packet loss going on. Several times transferring a file to one of my other computers the transfer would just stall. Somehow throughout the transfer process it either fails or the adapter disappears forcing me to unplug the adapter and plug it back in. The only thing I haven't tried yet is a different USB port. Don't know why that would make any difference though.

This was the exact problem I had with the old USB adapters (I believe they were WG111 from Netgear, cant remember the Rangemax router model #). The router actually was pretty good, at least performance and feature wise but the USB adapters were, to be nice about it, abysmal in functionality.

I recently went "all N" to support HD streaming with the DirectTV2PC app off of my DVR and got a WNDR3700 Router and a WNDA3100 USB adapter. The old draft N generic cards do pretty well at N speeds in the 2.4Ghz band while my PC with the WNDA3100 does well in the 5Ghz band. The oddball out is the Linksys WET610N that I got as an 802.11n AP for the DVR (in the 5Ghz band). I was worried that the brand mismatch would cause issues but, after the WPA2 AES was configured it all works flawlessly and I can stream 1080p from the DVR to my PC no problem with the bitrate not dropping below 108 Mbps.

What really suprised me was that the "generic" cheapo PCI Draft N cards work quite nicely on 2 other PCs (throw in 2 laptops with built in wireless). Can't believe how much time and money I've spent experimenting.

Sorry that all of the above isn't much help though, one thing to look at may be adapter and router settings. Often times with wireless one "feature" checkbox can make the world of difference.

So basically what you are saying is get a PCI/PCIe network adapter?

Major_A wrote:So basically what you are saying is get a PCI/PCIe network adapter?

Not necessarily but I would try a different adapter on that computer as a test to rule out the adapter and driver.

Could be the Windows network configuration, interference (try switching channels), the router (I know not much help).