Here's a head scratcher....

[falco]

I just bought a new computer(AMD 64 X2 3800+ with 1 GB ram). My internet(download) speeds are [glow=red,2,300]slower[/glow] than my old Athlon 1200 XP. Both are connected to a Netgear Router(networked). I just did a test on the new one and got 750 Kbps and 1100 Kbps on the old one(about my average). I have tried different cablenut settings(I am presently using the same profile as in the old computer). Nothing seems to work. I have tried shutting down anti-virus, firewall etc. while testing but it doesn't seem to matter.  :? Anyone have any ideas?

[dlewis23]

what is your advertised speed?

[falco]

I don't really have an advertised speed. As you can see from my avatar, I have wireless internet. It works on a 900 Mhz radio which is mounted in a box below my antenna on my roof. I am about 15 miles from my providers tower so consequently, the farther you are away from the tower, the less bandwidth. I could get 1500 Kbps if I was closer to the tower. It is tons better than dial-up or satellite.

[Swimmer]

I would check for driver updates...  Have you tried TCPoptimizer yet?

[falco]

I tried TCPoptimizer, but to no avail. I will check on driver updates.

[justinlay]

I don't really have an advertised speed. As you can see from my avatar, I have wireless internet. It works on a 900 MHz radio which is mounted in a box below my antenna on my roof. I am about 15 miles from my providers tower so consequently, the farther you are away from the tower, the less bandwidth. I could get 1500 Kbps if I was closer to the tower. It is tons better than dial-up or satellite.

Ive never heard of being to far and get less bandwidth? Im also on wireless isp but i have 2.4Ghz equipment

and im suppost to be out of reach. and i constaly get my advertised speed 2/512

[water]

I'll have my husband get on in a few and explain dial up and speeds...  he's the #1 geek of the wireless company he works for.

[dlewis23]

Ive never heard of being to far and get less bandwidth? Im also on wireless isp but i have 2.4Ghz equipment

and im suppost to be out of reach. and i constaly get my advertised speed 2/512

the farther you are away the less bandwidth you will get.

falco make sure you have the newest drivers for your network card, old drivers can cause the problem.

[water]

This is Water's Husband (I'm too lazy to post under my own name):

The company that I work for also provides 900MHz wireless internet access using Waverider equipment.  From the looks of the panel in your avatar, I'm going to venture to guess that the company you use for internet service doesn't use the same brand, but the principals should be the same.

Generally, 900MHz equipment functions slightly different than 2.4GHz (802.11b) equipment.  With 2.4GHz equipment, what generally happens is that there are tiers of service, depending on your distance from the tower.  Your best case scenario is generally 54Mbps (or in some rare cases 108Mbps).  However, when you distance yourself from the tower, it automatically re-negotiates your signal to a lower speed because there will be a significant amount of lost data if you try to send data at the same speed as you would when right next to the tower.

900MHz equipment, on the other hand, generally doesn't go through this extra step of trying to determine the best rate for your connection.  Instead, it will attempt to communicate at the maximum speed the modem has been authorized to communicate with the tower at, but if the distance is too great, or if there is too much noise between the tower and the modem, the modem experiences a large amount of packet loss.  To compensate for this, the modem will try to retry sending packets over and over until they finally go through, which will result in slowing down the speed of your connection.

Now, as far as one computer having a slower connection than the other, this is most likely something that is going on outside of anything to do with the wireless connection you have with your ISP entirely, as the modem you have won't even know it's connecting to a different computer since both your systems are behind your Netgear router.  What I would do to further your testing is to connect your new system directly to the wireless modem without the router involved and compare the speed that you get with that to the speed you get with your old computer hooked directly to your wireless connection.  I'm 99% certain that they should be getting the same speed.  Should that be the case, then try hard wiring each computer to the router (with the other computer completely unplugged from ther router) and testing each independently to see if speeds vary and see what happens.

Anymore questions, I'll be glad to help. She keeps me locked in the closet just for occasions such as this.

[falco]

Thanks for the reply. The tech guy with my ISP(small local company) told me that because of my distance to the tower, the radio "steps down" to compensate for packet loss. They told me that it steps down to 1000Kbps. They tried to force it to 2000Kbps but that didn't help any. As far as my download problem, I had the new computer hooked up directly before I installed the router, with the same results. This Asus MB uses a Nvidia nforce network controller. You access it through the browser. I just updated the ethernet driver , but the results haven't changed. Oh well, I have something to work on now.

[water]

That's interesting that it would obtain a different speed than your other system did.  On your old system, is the NIC integrated or is it on a PCI card that you can swap over to the new system?.  It would be interesting to see if this is NIC related or software related.  My guess would be software, but I don't want to jump to that conclusion just yet as this is a brand new machine.

[falco]

That's interesting that it would obtain a different speed than your other system did.  On your old system, is the NIC integrated or is it on a PCI card that you can swap over to the new system?.  It would be interesting to see if this is NIC related or software related.  My guess would be software, but I don't want to jump to that conclusion just yet as this is a brand new machine.

Both have integrated NIC's. I'm beginning to think that it's software related on the new computer. As I mentioned before, it has a Nvidia nforce network controller that controls it. There is a separate Ethernet component to it . There is 2 options(settings) you can enable. They are"CPU utilization" or "throughput". I tried both but my download results didn't change with either one.

[water]

Most network cards utilize an on board chip to handle processing incoming and outgoing traffic; however, it appears (from you description of the cpu vs. throughput options) that your network card is likely putting some of the load of handling traffic onto the CPU and the Operating System's drivers.  PCI network cards are relatively cheap these days, so you may want to consider picking one up to see if it makes a difference.  (They are about $10 at many stores)

[falco]

Most network cards utilize an on board chip to handle processing incoming and outgoing traffic; however, it appears (from you description of the cpu vs. throughput options) that your network card is likely putting some of the load of handling traffic onto the CPU and the Operating System's drivers.  PCI network cards are relatively cheap these days, so you may want to consider picking one up to see if it makes a difference.  (They are about $10 at many stores)

That's a good idea. I think I will do that.

[water]

That's a good idea. I think I will do that.

Let me know how that works out for ya.

[falco]

Update:

I installed a D-Link NIC and there was NO speed change. Don't know what to try now :?

[falco]

Update:

I installed a new D-link NIC, and still no speed change. I don't know what to try now.