wireless internet

[gibs]

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Any of your friends downloading large files maybe? College, porn.........

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Yes. A couple of my roommates download lots of music, and I'm sure some porn as well. Is this messing up the router?

[TonyS0pran0]

Well if everyone is downloading huge files it could be bandwidth problems. What kind of connection do you have? Go to www.dslreports.com and do a bandwidth test.

[gibs]

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It may be your schools internet that is the culprit. If the router worked at home it should work there, and I wouldnt expect a slowdown with under 20 users. (Are you sure its encrypted and your whole dorm isnt "stealing" your signal?)


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I live in a house off campus so we don't use the school's ISP (not sure who that is). We get ours from Cox cable which is the main provider in that area. There are about five other wireless networks in the area and I can actually connect on two of them. So we do have a password on ours.

[gibs]

I'm at home on Christmas break right now, so I'll have to get back to you on that. In the mean time could you explain the whole bandwidth deal to me. Thanks.

[smoore]

I'm convinced that all cheap wireless routers are crap. I've gone through two Linksys' in the time a friend has gone through three DLinks. Crap, crap, crap. Good luck with it but it's probably just dead [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] Once I got a Linksys to work for a little while longer by upgrading its firmware. On an unrelated note, the ethernet routing in one of my dead ones still works but not in the other. The one that doesn't route still works as a switch. Strange, very strange.

[TonyS0pran0]

Ok, when you sign with an ISP and they provide internet to you they allot you a certain amouont of bandwidth. Think of bandwidth as a pipe, so the wider or bigger it is the more information you can pump through it. I'm assuming you have cable or DSL or atleast I hope you do. If you have say five users on there pumping tons of information this way and that way you clog that pipe, which would explain slowdowns in your service.

[viennagreen]

First of all, it doesn't matter if there are other wireless networks in the area that are un-protected--- you need to encrypt your connection. There is no excuse not to do this-- it takes all of 3 minutes.

Make sure all of the people using your wireless connection download Ad-aware and Spybot and clean their systems of spyware regularly. Also-- all of you should have up-to-date anti-virus software, and download your windows updates regularly.

Turn on your D-link hardware firewall.

Find out what your bandwidth should be from your ISP and check it on dslreports.com

***
Running a proper network requires a little maintenance. For the most part though, it shouldn't require more than a few minutes of your time every week to keep things up and running properly.

[gibs]

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First of all, it doesn't matter if there are other wireless networks in the area that are un-protected--- you need to encrypt your connection. There is no excuse not to do this-- it takes all of 3 minutes.


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It is protected. Reread my post, it says that since I can access other's wireless connections I thought It'd be a good idea to protect mine. One of my buddies that knows a lot about computers told me that everyone should have antivirus on their computer, but the problems continued to occur even after we cleaned up everyone's computers. Thanks for the ideas though.

[gibs]

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I'm convinced that all cheap wireless routers are crap. I've gone through two Linksys' in the time a friend has gone through three DLinks. Crap, crap, crap.

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Are you saying that all wireless routers are cheap and therefore crap, or are there some better ones out there? All I have seen in the stores are d-link, linksys, and netgear. If there are some better ones out there I would be interested. Price doesn't matter, just want one that works.

[Lurshy]

I agree with this statement.

Some 900mhz Phone systems interefere with the wireless routers.

It is also improtant to have the router and wireless card from the same vendor. Inconsistant following of standards or use of different revisions of the standards leads to problems. Use Netgear cards with NetGear routers, use LKinksys with Linksys etc.

A friend of mine Had those types of issues. Replaced the 'delll' card with a motorola card (to match his router) and replaced a phone. Problem solved, unfortunately I don't know which item solved it, as both were done simultaneously.