'Slow' ethernet and wireless on one particular laptop

ThisRegard

So I've two laptops, both with ethernet and wireless N adapters but I'm getting massive discrepancy in download speeds between the two.

On one I'm getting 150Mbps+ via ethernet, around 80 or so wirelessly. Should I be getting higher on wireless, the laptop is right besides the router, UPCs EPC3925 ?

Now the second is the problem one. On Ethernet I'm only getting around 50 and on wireless around 20. Under device drivers for this I have the following, leaving out the bluetooth connections

Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030
Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter
Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter #2 (this is disabled)
Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller

Can anyone help as to why the second laptop is getting such slow download speeds, both on ethernet and wireless ? This laptop is the newer of the two and better spec'd.

Now this is probably a related issue, when I disconnect from the wireless and plug in my ethernet cable the machine doesn't recognise that a ethernet cable is plugged in, I have to reboot. I never had this issue previously.

cunnijo

ThisRegard wrote: »

So I've two laptops, both with ethernet and wireless N adapters but I'm getting massive discrepancy in download speeds between the two.

On one I'm getting 150Mbps+ via ethernet, around 80 or so wirelessly. Should I be getting higher on wireless, the laptop is right besides the router, UPCs EPC3925 ?

Now the second is the problem one. On Ethernet I'm only getting around 50 and on wireless around 20. Under device drivers for this I have the following, leaving out the bluetooth connections

Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030
Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter
Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter #2 (this is disabled)
Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller

Can anyone help as to why the second laptop is getting such slow download speeds, both on ethernet and wireless ? This laptop is the newer of the two and better spec'd.

Now this is probably a related issue, when I disconnect from the wireless and plug in my ethernet cable the machine doesn't recognise that a ethernet cable is plugged in, I have to reboot. I never had this issue previously.

Hi

Question for you. Does the newer laptop have bluetooth as a feature? If it does it could cause potential problems with an internet connection whether it is wired or wireless.

So if it is there is and it's turned ON disable it and see what happens.

Also get the updated drivers for your ethernet/wireless device(s) if you haven't done already. It may be the answer.

ThisRegard

Just tied it with Bluetooth off, no difference. All drivers are up to date. I have noticed that when I set the routers network mode to N only the wireless card can't see it even on the 2.4GHz channel only.

I'm pretty stumped as to what's going on.

ED E

ThisRegard wrote: »

Just tied it with Bluetooth off, no difference. All drivers are up to date. I have noticed that when I set the routers network mode to N only the wireless card can't see it even on the 2.4GHz channel only.

Which laptop is that, the second one?


According to the spec it should see it. Have you manually checked the drivers or just used windows update?(Device manager)

ThisRegard

Just popped in to update this thread. What was happening was that the laptop could eventually see the the N network but it wouldn't connect. I had already checked each device via device manager and all drivers were up to date and N was enabled so I was stumped.

Eventually I went into the Dell Service Centre to see what they had there and there were several updates under the Network tab, the two that caught my eye being the Intel Centrino Wireless-N which seems to have enabled N support, despite the previous version saying it already did, it installed a completely new intel pro wireless set, a pretty big update actually. The other was the gigabit ethernet controller driver which did the same job when connected via ethernet.

So despite the drivers within the device driver checking for updates and telling me they're all up to date, they were several important updates on the Dell site itself.

So lesson learned, even if the drivers are telling me they're up to date, check the Dell site.

Anyway, the above seemed to have helped, my connection is gone pretty slow again but I suspect that's my internet connection as opposed to my laptop.

ED E

Yeah, thats what I was going to suggest. Dont trust windows update, most drivers it wont actually find you really have to do it manually.

Simi

Just a suggestion for anyone who wants the latest drivers for intel based system components, is to use intel's automatic update tool which will find the latest driver updates for any intel component, regardless of the operating system in use.

Even people with "brand new" laptops should run this regularly. If it finds a custom driver from your laptop manufacturer thats blocking an update, you should uninstall that driver and run the tool again.

It won't harm your laptop, manufacturer modifications are irrelevant for intel based components. The only time you should use drivers supplied by your laptop manufacturer is for sound cards/non-intel network components which can sometimes have genuine manufacturer modifcations which benefit from customised drivers.

ThisRegard

One final update, couldn't for the life of me get the second machine connected via ethernet at speeds of more than 80, while the other was constantly hitting around 150. I took a look at the LAN connection and saw that it was only connecting at 100Mbp while the second machine was at 1Gbps.

I did a fair amount of research and googling on my card, the aforementioned Realtek FE PCIe family controller and soon realised that the FE must stand for Fast Ethernet, as there's GBE version which obviously must be the gb one, and the device settings weren't showing anything more than 100Mbs. Oddly my specific model is not appearing on the Realtek driver download site, RTL8167, probably not supported.

So I got on to Dell and after a bit of toing and froing they clairified its a NIC/Motherboard limitation. So despite the laptop itself being half decent, the NIC is a cheap ass old one. To be honest when I bought it last year it never even dawned on me to check out the NIC specs.