Member Avatar for coolbeanbob

Hello,

My roommate and I are both connected to the same wireless router. We have both tested our download speeds at websites such as speedtest.net and speakeasy.com. For some reason, he is getting 13+ Mbps, while I am downloading 1-2 Mbps.

I am running AVG free edition and have the windows firewall enabled.

I have a 802.11n Dell wireless card.

Even my iPhone is downloading at 7.5 Mbps.

Can anyone give suggestions for a fix?

My wireless card is Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card

Edited by coolbeanbob because: n/a
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Dani AI

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Quick summary and diagnostic approach based on the thread: ’s laptop measures much slower than other devices on the same WLAN, correctly flagged unit confusion (Mbps vs MB/s), and ’s torrent idea is fine for a real-throughput check but a local test is safer and more controlled. The goal is to determine whether the bottleneck is the ISP/router or the laptop’s wireless stack.

Start by isolating the problem and collecting facts without changing configs permanently. A wired Ethernet test is the simplest isolate: if wired throughput matches the fast device, the issue is wireless-only. On Windows, collect adapter and link info (status shows link speed) and run these commands to capture useful diagnostics:

netsh wlan show interfaces
netsh wlan show drivers
ipconfig /all
ping -n 20 8.8.8.8

Common causes and targeted checks: driver/firmware mismatch, power‑saving settings, adapter advanced options (Channel Width, 802.11n mode, Preferred Band, Transmit Power, Roaming Aggressiveness), and router-side limits (per-MAC QoS, guest-network throttling, or band-steering putting the laptop on a slower band). On crowded 2.4 GHz networks, forcing 20 MHz channel width or switching to 5 GHz (if supported) often helps. Temporarily disabling AV/firewall for a quick test can reveal software interference—do not leave protection off. Also look for background sync apps (Dropbox, Windows Update) or malware that consumes bandwidth.

Practical next steps that don’t require new hardware: update or roll back the Wi‑Fi driver to a vendor-tested version, set adapter power management to maximum performance, check router channel (use channels 1/6/11 on 2.4 GHz), verify router firmware, and test with a USB Wi‑Fi dongle if the built‑in card still underperforms. Collect link speeds, the netsh outputs above, and wired-test results to identify whether the issue is radio, driver, or router policy; those details narrow the fix quickly.

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Member Avatar for khajvah

Are you sure your and your roommate's speeds are in mbit/s. Mbit and mb are different. For some reason 13 mbit is 1-2 mb.
Try to download a torrent. If you get 1-2 mb/s, your speed is 13+ mBIT/s. If you are getting 200kb/s, your speed is 1-2 mBIT/s

Edited by khajvah because: n/a
Member Avatar for zeroliken

Try to download a torrent.

Just make sure that what your downloading is not illegal :)

Member Avatar for coolbeanbob

My laptop download speed is definitely slower than my phone my roommate's laptop. We are using the same website (for speed test), and I use the same website on my phone, and my laptop speed is 0.4-2.0 vs 9.0 on iPhone and 13.0-24.0 on roommate's machine.

Edited by coolbeanbob because: n/a
Member Avatar for khajvah

Just make sure that what your downloading is not illegal :)

SUUUUUUUUUUUURE, legal :)

Anyway, i have never seen a problem like that :(

Member Avatar for coolbeanbob

I think what we need are people that have seen a problem like this, with the same wireless card.

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