New wireless router, slow connection

[Guest]

I am running Windows XP Home sp1, and have AOL Broadband DSL. Usually, I
download at around 100 kb/s, but I just recently bought a Linksys WRT54g
wireless router, and I had a newbie quesiton. Is it supposed to slow down
your connection? Since I put it in, I have been downloading at around 40 or
50kb/s, and that's not normal. This PC is hardwired to the router. I read
about MTU and all that, but it didn't change anything. I am very new to
wireless networking, and any kind of networking for that matter. Can anyone
figure out what's up?

Also, I have a Windows 98 machine running wirelessly to the router via USB
adapter. It downloads even slower, most pages wont even load, meaning, the IE
loading bar will go all the way up, and then a blank screen for a few
minutes, and then "Page can not be displayed" shows up. I can get on like,
MSN, and I have the AOL software installed on it, and that connects, but
things like capitalone.com , I can't log into it, it just hangs there. Is it
because it's encrypted? I think I have gotten into that site once on the 98
pc, and that's it. Any ideas? I heard flushing the dns does something, but I
forgot how to do that via command prompt.

Thanks again, Chris.

 

[Guest]

I forgot to mention, Every now and then (about every 2 days) the router
disconnects itself, and I have to go to the 192.168.1.1 page and re-connect
it. It's not a big deal, but it cuts out at very annoying times, like during
an online game. Any ideas on what is causing that?

 

[Kyuzo]

Chris

I have the same router as you. First thing I suggest you do is download the
newest firmware of your router if you haven't done so already. I had
numerous problems with it before and a major of them were fixed after
appying the newest version of its firmware.

 

[GTS]

Do you have AOL Cable or DSL?

 

[Guest]

DSL

Do you have AOL Cable or DSL?

 

[GTS]

AOL broadband is not very common and tends to be highly problematic to share
with a router (virtually impossible with AOL cable). AOL claims that it's
DSL service is a standard PPOE connection, but I have found that no router
will work correctly in some locations. I hope you have better luck - here's
are a few ideas

- Make sure the MTU in the router is set to 1400. That's a must for AOL
DSL.
- Are you configuring the router to do the PPOE logon to AOL using one of
your screen names?
- See http://tinyurl.com/apg8q for some AOL troubleshooting information.
- Call AOL support (but don't expect too much.).

It may well be possible to switch to a standard DSL provider (e.g. verizon),
change you're AOL billing plan to aol for broadband if you want to keep it,
and come out with a net saving.
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[Guest]

With all my years of building and working with computers, I would have
thought I was smarter than this. I found out why the 98 computer was
slow...it had a crappy signal strength. It's something so trivial that I
never would have thought of. I hooked up an extra 3ft USB cable extension,
and that brought it up at LEAST 30%, now it's blazing speed. But, it seems
that it's now a little faster than the xp machine. So my question...How do
routers work? Do they split the connection however many ways, slowing it down
in the process, or should it keep all of them the same speed? What use to be
a 100kb/s download speed is now 40 or 50 (50 if im lucky) and I wanted to
know if there is anything I can do, either with the router's firmware or in
the computer itself so speed it up.

Thanks again.

 

[GTS]

If you are using multiple connections simultaneously your bandwidth will
be divided. The drop with only 2 computers would not be very significant
depending what they're doing. If only one computer is active the router
will have little or no effect on throughout. The dramatic drop in
throughput that you report is not normal and indicates a problem. Updating
the routers firmware is generally a good idea, but it may or may not have
much impact on your problem. I would certatainly go ahead and do it.

My prior message had some suggestions. In addition to those, you might
also look into the configuration of your DSL modem for use with the router
and whether it should be manually set to bridge mode. I don't know what
modem you have, but again, suggest conferring with AOL support.
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