Thinkpads Forum

I have my new T410 just received yesterday to replace my 3-year old X61s. It is fine except for a major problem with slow or no internet throughput on the wireless adapter.

With the machines side-by-side, my X61s has no problems at all on my home Wi-Fi network using the original Intel Wi-Fi 4965AGN wireless adapter. (My home network operates on "G" mode.)

My T410 has the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 AGN adapter. Downloads take about 3-4 times as long on the T410, or just fail. Downloading the iTunes software from Apple, for example, takes 4 minutes on my X61s at the normal 2.5 mbps throughput rate I get on my DSL connection. On the T410, it takes 15 - 20 minutes. Sometimes, downloads on the T410 just quit midway and never resume. They never quit on my X61s. (Why did I get a new computer again? LOL)

Accessing web pages is another problem. My X61s gets them every time. About half the time, the T410 fails, and the browser responds that it cannot find the server. When web pages do load, it is much slower on the T410. The machines have the same DNS settings.

The wireless connection status on my T410 looks as good as on my X61s. 99% signal strength, excellent signal quality.

I tried a direct Ethernet cable connection between my DSL modem and the T410. Works great and almost as good as my X61s. So, I guess it is the wireless adapter, or the connection between the adapter and the rest of the computer. The only things I can think of are 1) something weird in the power management is holding it back, or 2) with the multiple antennas, maybe some got cross-wired -- the status shows an excellent signal quality, but what exactly does the adapter read to show that? Is there a way (practically) to look more deeply into what is going on in the wireless adapter?

I am headed out of town tomorrow for two weeks and I'd like to get this fixed, but I guess I may have to take the old X61s and take it up with Lenovo when I return. I really like the computer and don't want to return it.

Thank you for any tips.

Try to set the wireless card to maximum performance and not to maximum power saving or so, maybe this will help. (device manager > network adapters > wireless card > advanced > power management).

That's a great idea. I didn't think of the Device Manager. I disabled the power management, and it made no difference. I also played around with some other settings there, such as forcing it to 802.11G, turning off 802.11N, etc. No difference. Still several times slower than the X61s. Thanks for the suggestion!

Reading about other wireless problems and solutions here, I uninstalled the driver for the wireless adapter, then installed the most current one I found on the Intel site. Didn't help.