T60 wireless packet loss and inconsistent browsing

[RaviN]

System: T60, 2GB RAM, Atheros a/b/g/n - 6.0.3.94 driver, XP SP3, Time Warner cable

Problem: Wireless connectivity works but I need lots of clicks to get pages to load - click on a link connection is made/status bar hangs, reclick and page loads. Download speed bursty - sometimes pages load very fast, sometimes they hang for several seconds and start up again, etc. Standard speed tests from dslreports.com, speakeasy, and Stanford's NDT server show good download speeds but browsing is not as smooth as it should be - Firefox 3.5, IE6, and Chrome.

Verified that wired Ethernet is working correctly direct to cable modem and then wired to switch on wireless router. Tried other computers on the router wired and wireless, ran the ping tests below on those machines, no problems. Very fast browsing, no hiccups.

I tried switching from OpenDNS back to Time Warner cable for DNS resolution. No difference.

I tried pings with large packets.
Wireless ping tests with Atheros: ping -t -l 1472 to 192.168.1.1 (router), google, yahoo, etc. show packet losses of >20%
Wired ping tests with same size packets: 1% loss, max, often 0%

Bought external USB wireless a/b/g/n adapter, turned off internal T60 wireless with the physical switch.
Wireless ping tests: <1% packet loss to router and known sites with the external adapter
Faster, more reliable connectivity

Obtained replacement Atheros card from Lenovo under warranty
Wireless ping tests show packet losses of >20%, same connectivity glitches as before

So, it looks like something else is the matter with my setup. Any ideas why the internal a/b/g/n is having these problems? Nothing unusual in the Device Manager options, no funky power settings, or anything. Lenovo had me try the updated driver (disrecommended elsewhere on the Forum) and it would never fully install. I reverted to the 6.0.3.94 version which I used for all the tests above. This seems to be a problem that just cropped up sometime in the last few weeks/months. I used to get excellent performance with the internal card. No major software installations to speak of but I've accepted a lot of MS patches.

[GomJabbar]

Try disabling IPV6.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555059

[RaviN]

I don't see IPv6 installed on this system. I checked both the internal and USB wireless adapters as well as the ethernet adapter.

The problem isn't as dire as the KB article. Only that the internal wireless card is lossy compared to the external wireless and wired connections.

[GomJabbar]

Kind of sounds like a "Black Hole Router".

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314825

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314053/

You can Google "black hole router" for more articles.

[sktn77a]

I have a similar problem on my two T61p Thinkpads - poor browsing speeds on wireless with Vista. Not much better with XP. Tried disabling IPv6, no effect. I think there'a a problem with the design of this Intel AGN card or the IBM/Lenovo driver (I haven't tried the intel driver yet).

[RaviN]

Thanks for the reference to Black Hole routers. The problem I am seeing is that I get packet losses with the internal card when pinging my own router set up as the default 192.168.1.1 (Netgear WGR614v6 with latest firmware). The external USB wireless adapter doesn't have this problem pinging the same router. All other parameters I know about are unchanged.

I thought I had the problem fixed by setting the Atheros to 2GHz only. I think a new 2G/5G router has shown up in the neighborhood and it seemed for a little while that this fixed it. Unfortunately, it was short-lived and I'm back to losing packets.

Again, I have connectivity with the Atheros but it isn't as good as with the external device I bought to troubleshoot it.

Is it rational to think that the Atheros and the Netgear wireless combination is not a good one? Both commercial products working to common standards but I don't what else is left to suspect.

[GomJabbar]

In Access Connections, there should be a setting for the power level of the card. This setting can probably be found in other places as well. Note that "Maximum" is maximum power saving and minimum power level. Try setting the power to high. There is also a setting for long and short preamble. You might experiment with that.

You can try using a different WiFi channel, although I am not too sure this would make a difference.

You could open up your ThinkPad and verify that the antenna wires are connected to the WiFi card.

In regards to your particular WiFi card, I have not followed the performance history of it. It could be true that there is some incompatibility between your card and your router. Search the forum threads and see what others recommend. You could replace the card with a different model. Note that if you replace the card, you need a Lenovo branded card to prevent boot errors (1802 error). Lenovo brands Intel, Atheros, and perhaps other cards.