Slow wireless speeds, but fast connection

[tsservo]

I've got a T60p and an X41T in the house. I've always had a slow 802.11g connection (tops of 200kb/s) but figured that it had more to do with a dying 3Com ADSL2+ modem/router (dropped connections, finally just gave up).

The router was just replaced with a Billion 7401VGPM and to my dismay I'm still getting a top speed of 200kb/s over the wireless to my two Thinkpads.

But I've just had a guest over who brought along her HP Pavilion DV2500. Over the exact same connection with no special configuring she's getting 1.3MB/s (or more, it was still speeding up on the 20mb download) over the wireless.

Even if Vista misrepresents it's speeds, the download test still took a lot less time than the TP's.

This confuses me.

The differences are: the HP is running Vista and a Broadcom 802.11b/g.

The Thinkpads are running XP SP2 with an Intel 3945ABG card and SP3 with an Intel 2915ABG card.

All three were tested at the same spot in the house, though the T60p resides in the same room as the router.

I know the Intels aren't as fast as other wireless chipsets, but they can't be over 5x slower. If one of the two was slow and the other running like the HP I'd say it was a problem with the machine. But I've got two TP's at 200kb/s and an HP that's ripping through the bandwidth. It's got to be a setting somewhere, I hope.

FWIW, though I don't think it matters, it's a WPA2, MAC filtered, 11g locked, firewall on the modem/router.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why the Thinkpads are so much slower on the exact same wireless connection? I've tried reinstalling the device drivers and resetting my IP stack, but that seems to have had no effect.

Thanks much.

Tim

[bill bolton]

I know the Intels aren't as fast as other wireless chipsets,

Not so!

It's got to be a setting somewhere

That seems highly likely. Check the power setting for the wireless cards and make sure they are on maximum power.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[tsservo]

I think I got it sorted. It appears to have been the TCP settings for XP, which I've been reading are pretty well unoptimised for fast connections.

Seems that Vista has the ability to optimise the TCP settings on the fly whereas XP does not.

I ran a TCP optimiser program that was recommended (unblocka) and it appears to have done the trick. I did try TCPOptimiser but it didn't do all that much - seems to be a much more manual settings program whereas the unblocka is a single button thing.

I'm now downloading as fast as the Vista machine - peaked at 1.3MB/s as the download completed. I haven't tried a larger file to see what the top end is yet.

Where I got my info:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re ... 12482.html