Thinkpads Forum

I have a T500 with the Intel WIFI Link 5300 AGN and a Linksys E900 N wireless router. I just noticed it's on ch. 9 G. Linksys says I have to pay $40 since it's past the 90 day free help period (I bought it in September and called them with setup issue.).

Linksys did say that the security setting is OK for N (some settings could only run at G) and it's probably the 5300 that needs tweaking. Without the $40, they won't troubleshoot. How can I check it or where can I go to find out. Thanks for any help.

Slick_tu wrote:I have a T500 with the Intel WIFI Link 5300 AGN and a Linksys E900 N wireless router.

You didn't say what your issue actually is, but I'll take a guess it's that you aren't getting 300 Mpbs link speed on the connection.

The E900 only operates in the 2.4Ghz WiFi band, and with a Intel WiFi card, you basically won't get more than about ~130 Mbps connection speed on 802.11n in the 2.4Ghz band. This is expected behaviour and is compliant with the final 802.11n specs.

If you have some other issue, please explain what it is.

Cheers,

Bill B.

bill bolton wrote: You didn't say what your issue actually is, but I'll take a guess it's that you aren't getting 300 Mpbs link speed on the connection.

The E900 only operates in the 2.4Ghz WiFi band, and with a Intel WiFi card, you basically won't get more than about ~130 Mbps connection speed on 802.11n in the 2.4Ghz band. This is expected behaviour and is compliant with the final 802.11n specs.

If you have some other issue, please explain what it is.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Thanks for your reply, Bill. It seems I'm still running at "G" instead of "N." When I mouse over the tray icons (Win XP) they show 54.0 Mbps as they always did with my old router. When I search the neighborhood networks in Access Connections, most show 802.11n but mine (and 1 or 2 others) comes up 802.11g. The Windows Device Manager settings seem to correspond to Intel's recommendations and I've upgraded the 5300 driver/software. Just wondering why I'm not getting N instead of G. Maybe it is the E900, but I don't know what to check. Thanks, again.

Another couple of possiblities are that it is dropping to the speed of the slowest connected device; My first router used to do that, it would drop to 802.11B when my T41 was connected; I would expect that they would have solved that by now, but anything is possible. The second thing I can come up with is that there are a lot of other networks in your area, and it has dropped to a slower speed to improve the quality of the connection - I would consider this the most likely possiblity, since the 2.4ghz band is fairly crowded in most residential areas nowadays.

craigmontHunter wrote:Another couple of possiblities are that it is dropping to the speed of the slowest connected device; My first router used to do that, it would drop to 802.11B when my T41 was connected; I would expect that they would have solved that by now, but anything is possible. The second thing I can come up with is that there are a lot of other networks in your area, and it has dropped to a slower speed to improve the quality of the connection - I would consider this the most likely possiblity, since the 2.4ghz band is fairly crowded in most residential areas nowadays.

My T500 is the only device, but the second possibility is quite likely. I see nine other networks in the neighborhood in Access Connections. There used to be only three. Thanks, very much, for your help.

Rick