Help with the most frustrating device of my life

[speeddemon]

Without a doubt, I hate my wireless adapter. Beyond all belief I hate this thing. I'd love to be hardwired in, but instead my mom's a bitch about it and we can't move the router to my room because it's derp.

So here's the problem. Because I can't be hard wired in I have this wireless thingy. Functions fine most of the time, normal internet isn't really a problem. Downloading and gaming, on the other hand, are apparently quite an issue. I'll be coasting along at a nice 70ish lat, when suddenly, a wild 5000 appeared and ****ed you up for a few seconds! This in and of itself might not be much of a problem, but it also intermittently dcs me for about 30s, and sometimes it dcs me entirely and i have to wait like 5 mins for it to reconnect. As far as downloading is concerned I should be getting around 2-4 mbps. With this wireless it randomly plummets to approx 64bps. That's right. Bps. When it isn't being completely cruel but still doesn't want me to have my normal internet I'll float around 500kbps.

Nobody else in the house has these issues, one other is using the same type of wireless adapter I am, but he's closer to the router, so maybe that helps. Two others are using laptops with no issues. I've installed all the drivers that came with it, and as far as I'm aware I have all my mobo drivers working just fine too. It's not sitting anywhere there should be interference.

Using a Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless adapter, will post any other stuff you need to know about my comp.

Edit: Also nobody is running torrents, etc, and more often than not i'm the only one using the internet at all.

[Calcium Deposit]

Whats your signal strength sitting at?

Also, try setting your router to a 5 Ghz frequency, it's more reliable but has a shorter range than the 2.4 default frequency

-Edit Also note that USB dongles are notoriously unreliable and you're probably lucky that yours works at all

[speeddemon]

Signal strength is the full five bars, sometimes it'll go down to 4 but it never seems to make a difference when it decides to take a crap on me, and how to does change?

Edit in response to edit: I know they have a poor reputation, and honestly i didn't want one, but we couldn't find any cards for a decent price. Only one we found was ~$120, and we don't really have $240 just laying around to blow on it.

[Calcium Deposit]

I would first look to see if your router supports broadcasting at that frequency, not all of them do. Mine broadcasts simultaneously on both frequencies, but if you have to manually set it it's going to be on the router configuration page that you can usually get to by typing in your router's IP into your browser's address bar.

Edit- you can find your router's Ip by opening up CMD prompt and typing in

ipconfig /all

Look for the data set that says "Wireless LAN adapter" then underneath that "default gateway"

[speeddemon]

Right, so, according to our resident experienced network man, we can't even log into this router anyway because our company is derp as ****. So out goes that idea regardless.

[Calcium Deposit]

You could probably cheat and buy your own wireless router then, they aren't cheap but try looking for one that supports 5 GHz.

Other than that I would try getting an internal PCI wireless card.

I would also make sure your USB adapter is plugged into a USB 3.0 slot or at the very least a 2.0 slot.

[speeddemon]

Does it make actually difference if it's plugged into the USB 3.0 even if it itself isn't one? Resident tech man acted like I couldn't use them for older stuff, so I kinda avoided it. But it's def in a 2.0 slot. And I dunno if we can actually replace this router or if our company is nazi about that too, use teh Brighthouse and they seem to be fairly restrictive about the hardware so far. Also nobody in this house would support getting a new router when I'm the only one having issues, cuz they's a dick.


Edit: do appreciate you trying to help if it seems like i'm just being argumentative and smacking down w/e you have to offer, we just aren't exactly in the best of places financially atm so replacing things and such would be rather difficult.

[Reincarnate]

If you have a decent smartphone, turn it into a wireless access point

[Calcium Deposit]

If it's a 2.0 device then it's not going to make any difference, the main thing I was checking is to make sure it wasn't in a 1.1 or 1.0 slot or something. Those have the lowest throughput.

You don't have to 'replace' the router, as long as there are plenty of ethernet slots in the modem to use.

[ninjaKIWI]

No need to move the router to your room. Just buy a longer ethernet cable. I have my HTPC in my living room upstairs hard wired. The router is in the basement.

[speeddemon]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

If you have a decent smartphone, turn it into a wireless access point

HTC EVO 4g?

Originally Posted by Calcium Deposit

If it's a 2.0 device then it's not going to make any difference, the main thing I was checking is to make sure it wasn't in a 1.1 or 1.0 slot or something. Those have the lowest throughput.

And yeah my comp itself is pretty much brand new, did that before I had to switch rooms away from a hardwired connection and while i still had some extra money to blow.

Originally Posted by ninjaKIWI

No need to move the router to your room. Just buy a longer ethernet cable. I have my HTPC in my living room upstairs hard wired. The router is in the basement.

As I said in my post, my mom refuses to let me do that. She has some odd issue with having wires in her room, even though for about 10 years her room has been her office, so longer ethernet cables are out. Was my preferred solution but she cockblocked me :/

[hi19hi19]

buy a longass network cable from like home depot, they're pretty cheap

then just run it through the house from the router to your computer, if anyone trips over it be like buy me a new adapter and we wont have this problem hmmm

[Reincarnate]

http://www.knowyourcell.com/htc/htc-..._for_free.html

I personally tether with my Nexus Galaxy and it is massively fast and convenient

[Calcium Deposit]

using a program called "PDAnet" from the android app market you can USB tether internet connection without having to 'root' your phone. Just make sure you connect to your wireless network on your phone.

[speeddemon]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

http://www.knowyourcell.com/htc/htc-..._for_free.html

I personally tether with my Nexus Galaxy and it is massively fast and convenient

Originally Posted by Calcium Deposit

using a program called "PDAnet" from the android app market you can USB tether internet connection without having to 'root' your phone. Just make sure you connect to your wireless network on your phone.

All right I'll try this out, gonna have to wait til tomorrow to actually test it. Got class in the morning, need to go to bed. I'll post with results on the morrow~

[ninjaKIWI]

Originally Posted by speeddemon

As I said in my post, my mom refuses to let me do that. She has some odd issue with having wires in her room, even though for about 10 years her room has been her office, so longer ethernet cables are out. Was my preferred solution but she cockblocked me :/

Just wanted to be clear that you did not in fact say that.

we can't move the router to my room because it's derp.

So let me get this straight. The router is in HER room, and she doesn't want a cord going to her room?

[Bluearrowll]

Also try this for a more aggressive connection:

Under your Wireless Network Connection Status,
1) Go to Properties (Requires Admin)
2) Click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)
3) Click Configure
4) Under 802.11n Channel Width for band 2.4, make sure Auto is selected.
5) Under 802.11n Channel Width for band 5.2, make sure Auto is selected.
6) 802.11n mode Enabled.
7) Roaming Aggressiveness set to 5. Highest (Default should be 3. Medium).
8) Thoroughput Enhancement should be Enabled.
9) Set Transmit Power to 5. Highest (default should be 3. Medium).
10) Set Wireless Mode to 6. 802.11a/b/g.

This will eat up more bandwidth, but hopefully you should have a stronger, faster connection.

[Crashfan3]

Originally Posted by ninjaKIWI

No need to move the router to your room. Just buy a longer ethernet cable. I have my HTPC in my living room upstairs hard wired. The router is in the basement.

You should convince your mom to let you do this. My wireless signal was atrocious (metal roof ftl) so now I'm hooked up via ~150 ft of ethernet cable that I ran out of the main house, underground, and out to me.

[Winrar]

My dad was nice enough to drill a hole through the floor since the modem is downstairs and my comp is upstairs.

[speeddemon]

Originally Posted by ninjaKIWI

Just wanted to be clear that you did not in fact say that.



So let me get this straight. The router is in HER room, and she doesn't want a cord going to her room?

I would've thought it would be clear when I said I couldn't be hardwired in, but I suppose I did not explicitly state that, sure. And yes. It's in her room and she refuses to have any wires running through it. Even if they're stapled to a corner of the roof and drawn through the house in an inconspicuous fashion or sent through a hole in the wall, etc. Silly, right? Trying various things suggested, will edit in results.

Results:
Okay so as far as the tethering my phone to the computer goes, I don't really have an extra sd card laying around and I'd rather not root my phone anyway because I'm a bit paranoid that I'll ruin something. Tried the pdanet thing, but it says it actually doesn't work for HTC phones because of some lock or something, and tells you to call Sprint to set up the hotspot services, so that's a no go. The phone itself can connect to the wireless network, but the computer doesn't seem to use it when I try to tether it.

@Bluearrow; I get into configure and only find 802.11h+d and 802.11n Preamble, so asking if those are fine or if something different needs to be done or if you need more information or what before I continue.