downloads are very slow?

[peter94]

Just moved into my apartment for college, signed up for the 256k cable package through kms internet. Hooked up a WBR-2310 D-link router (wireless) to provide internet to my desktop and a laptop. Both computers download files at about 600-900 bytes (yes bytes, not kbytes) per second. sometimes it will get as high as 2kbs. When I unplug the router and hook the laptop up directly to the cable modem it will download at like 30kbs or more. Or when i create the port forwarding on port 80 (http) the computer i do that for will download at least 30kbps. I just want to be able to have both computers download at a reasonable speed. Both computers are windows xp, desktop xp pro, laptop xp home. laptop has centrino chip, desktop has pentium 4, both have 512mb ram. internet pages load okay, not great, not as fast as i'm used to, but okay. I just cant deal with the slow download speeds, also streaming stuff doesnt happen very fast either.

Another problem is i have WEP encryption enabled. I go and punch in the wep key in the laptop (or desktop) and connect to the internet and it works for a while (maybe 5 min) then somthing happens and the password reverts itself automatically to some 8 digit password and i have to re-enter it in order to get back on the internet. This is through windows. Right now i'm using the intel pro set program to run the internet and it is working, i was just wondering why the windows was kicking me off?

[lasher511]

Sounds like either the router that you are using is faulty, your too far away from the router (this shouldn't be a problem for you considering they go upto 100m)or someone else is using your bandwith.

And before i get like 600 posts saying BUT HE HAS WEP ENABLED HOW COULD THEY BE. It is not that hard to crack a WEP encrytion if you have the right tools and the right tools are easy to get and cost under $80 which would be well worth it if your on a campus and its likely their will be at least one person using a wireless router.

[peter94]

Actually, here's EVERYTHING that happened. I moved in, got ineternet, hooked up wireless router, everything seemed to be working fine, then like a month later i realized download speeds were quite slow so in an effort to fix that i found out that my firmware was out of date, so i updated that, and somehow in doing so it basically restarted my router so i had to go through and set it all up again, (before i had wep enabled) but this time i decided to do WPA, and i did and it wasnt working. We couldnt get on to the computer. but i think that is because something is messed up in the windows program and it keeps defaulting itself back to some strange password. I think i fixed that though. I deleted the ssid on the windows program and made a new one and now it seems to be holding the password, but i cant figure out why my downloads are so slow. i mean come on? 856 bytes per second is slower than things were ten years ago.