Broadband

[TAMMY]

Hi
My wireless router is a 11 Mbps I have 2 laptops working from it, but the speed is really slow, I have broadband at 1 meg speed, I realise that when 2 laptops are on together it would slow down but it is now painfully slow the connection shows good but the speed is down to 5.5 or even 2 Mbps is this right? and would it make a difference if I had a better higher speed router?
sorry don't know much about this, just can't beleive having 2 laptops connected to the internet would take it back to dial up speeds!!

Wendy

[BaggyDave]

Depends if you are after faster internet or faster local network speeds

If for the internet then no those speeds are ample for a 1 meg line

[TAMMY]

Thank you
but what are the differences between the 2?
Wendy

[Chris Locke]

If you connect laptop A, is the connection fast? If you disconnect laptop A and use laptop B, is the connection still fast? Does it only drop once both laptops are connected? On a 1MB line, it should be ample for 2 computers simply browsing.

[Lunchpod]

buy a new wireless router

[AdminSpod]

11mbps is theoretical peak. You will never actually achieve that. 5.5mbps sounds about right. Wireless speeds drop off as signal strength decreases - that can be due to distance from the router and/or getting through walls and/or interference from other wireless equipment increases. If the router can't connect wireless at 5.5mbps it will drop to 2mbps and then 1mbps.

The trouble is if one PC steps down to 2mbps or lower, everything tends to slow down because the access point takes longer communicating with that PC which takes up bandwidth from other users.

2mbps is still fast enough for your broadband, but isn't much use for sending data on your local network and won't be very good when broadband goes over 2mbps. If you upgrade you would have a far more usable LAN so you could share resources like disks and printers between PCs.

As your current network seems to be experiencing signal strength problems it might be worth considering something like the Netgear Rangemax ADSL2+ routers which would be less likely to switch down and would be ready for the next generation of ADSL. Not cheap though, and you will also need to upgrade your PC network cards to make the most of it.