Slow Airport Extreme Network - Any ideas?

[mistuk]

This is bugging me and I dont know how to solve it....

I've got a cablemodem plugged into a Linksys WRT54G with firmware 4.20.7

That connects to my G5 iMac by an ethernet cable........ all fine and dandy

I've also got a 12" Powerbook with built in airport extreme - it says the following in System Profiler:

AirPort Card Information:

Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme
Wireless Card Locale: Worldwide
Wireless Card Firmware Version: 404.2 (3.90.34.0.p16)
Current Wireless Network: xxxxx
Wireless Channel: 5


I've got good signal strength with 'AirTrafficControl' reporting 54Mbps.... However realworld transfer speeds are crap.

I consistantly see download speeds on the Ethernet connected mac of 650k/s , but on the wireless connected Powerbook the max is 250 k/s

Transfers between the Powerbook and iMac are not that great either. I'm getting dropouts when streaming music from iTunes on the iMac to the Powerbook

Am I expecting too much, or is there something wrong here?

I'm running 10.4.3 on both machines

Kev

 

[mad jew]

What's your range like? Are there other users on the network? I download at roughly the same speed irrespective of whether I'm using wired or wireless. Do you have something like LimeWire running that could be both sapping your connection speed and slowing the network generally. It's quite common for P2P and BitTorrent apps to slow down a network for one reason or another, even if they aren't downloading or uploading anything.

 

[DanielNTX]

Switch network channels. You probably have other wireless using the same channel yours is on.

 

[mistuk]

Thanks for the ideas! My range is good - doesn't matter if I'm right next to the wireless router - it's the same result.

I've not got any P2P / bittorrent type apps, so it's not that - I can't find anything else using the connection.

I've also tried different channels, but to no avail!

Any more ideas?

Kev

 

[mad jew]

Maybe check Activity Monitor in the Network section to see what sort of transfer speed the AirPort is getting. Click on data, not packets.

 

[840quadra]

Have you tried to toggle "interface robustness" on and off ?

It is supposed to counteract signal interference from other outside sources. In case you have any.