Why is my new wireless adapter/ wireless connection seeming to slow down my internet connection so much?

Question

Recently I moved from a wired to a wireless connection, and the internet speed on my PC has been so much slower since. When running speed tests it shows that the speed has halved, although it feels like it has done more than that, browsing is excruciating.
 
I have a Netgear wireless N router and a Belkin wireless N adapter, I run Windows Vista and as far as I know the CPU never gets massively busy, nor am I running out of memory at all. To try and solve this I had my internet speed doubled to 20 MB, but that hasn't helped whatsoever. 

The odd thing is that the internet speed of the two laptops also running off this connection are speedy as anything. They're never doing anything too strenuous, no torrents or anything. The PC internet speed is just as slow when the laptops are not connected.

I've password protected the wireless connection and I can see no-one else is on the network. 

Thanks in advance, if I can't resolve this then the wireless has to go, and that would be sad.

? · Accepted Answer

You should get reasonable speeds from your Wireless N network. but they will never be as fast as a wired ethernet connection which runs at 100Mpbs, one would expect 15-50Mbps - you won't get anything like the predicted speeds on the box. Don't forget when you have 2 PC/laptops wirelessly connected they each take half the bandwidth. I would try changing the broadcast channel on the router in case you are getting interference from neighbouring networks. I would have also bought a matching same brand (netgear) wireless adapter to go with the router, same brands always work better together.
You could try moving the router to a different spot
Check for a firmware upgrade to your router and wifi adapter, and also use the latest drivers from the belkin website
Alternatively instead of a long ethernet cable you could use powerline/homeplug adapters
- these use mains wiring instead of a long ethernet cable. You plug a powerline adapter into one of the ethernet ports on the router and into a local mains socket and another adapter into your computer ethernet port and a nearby mains socket
Speeds are better than wifi and signals can be encrypted so your neighbour cannot hack in if they have powerline adapters.

http://www.netgear.co.uk/powerline_wallplugged_extenders.php

ihfwt · Answer

Check for firmware upgrade for your Netgear router. Driver update for Belkin wifi adapter. Lastly what service pack are you running on your Vista?
Also check properties of your Belkin, there may some parameters you can adjust to speed it up.

Anonymous · Answer

I found a similar problem which might help a bit:-

http://www.geeknewz.com/board/lofiversion/index.php/t2345.html

Hope it helps a bit.

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Why is my new wireless adapter/ wireless connection seeming to slow down my internet connection so much?

3 Answers