Question:
Hey Jason, I was hoping you could provide a little advice.

I recently switched to Comcast internet service, about 3 days ago, and I am having major problems with my wireless network. When we had Qwest, I never had to reset the router, it always operated at the same speed, and never went down. Now that I have switched to Comcast, my wireless internet speed is ridiculously low. I know it is not a problem with the provider because when hard-line to the ISP modem, I get speeds of roughly 25 mB/s, but when I connect to the wireless network, I am getting about .33 mB/s, and I am using the Comcast Xfinity Speed test to get these figures.

What could be the issue? I realize that there will be a drop-off when testing wirelessly, but not from 25 to .33 mb/s.

Answer:
Excellent question!  There is no ‘drop off’ in the conventional sense of the term.  A drop off would imply that the speed was fast and then slowed down over the course of the speed test.  In this case, Comcast does throttle their residential customers (you’re slowed down if you use more than 80% of your promised bandwidth for more than a few minutes).  That’s legal in the same world where a cell phone company can say un-limited means 5GB.  Go figure.

Anyway… Your drastic speed difference is either caused by an older router which has begun to kick the bucket, or, more likely, a WiFi card on the network which is not WiFi N compatible.  Let me break it down for you.

As I’m sure you know, to get the best wireless speed, you need the same standard to be accepted by both the router and the WiFi card.  If a single device is not Wireless N compliant, the router will adapt to the needs of the slowest device and shift itself down to accommodate the slower device.  Alternatively, if the router itself is not wireless N compliant, every Wireless N card will shift down to accommodate the router it is connecting to.

Now, enter the world of Dual-Band Routers.  The higher end of modern routers usually have a feature called ‘simultaneous-dual band transmission’.  That means the router has two separate transmitters within the unit itself and can function entirely independent of each other.  If a Wireless G card tries to connect to the router, one of the transmitters shifts frequencies and standards to permit the connection without slowing down the rest of the wireless devices.  If every device is Wireless N, the two transmitters usually shift to accommodate the two Wireless N frequencies: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.  5 GHz is faster but more prone to interference and 2.4 is slower and more robust.  They both use the same standard, but on different frequencies.

In your case, I think your Lenovo might claim to have a Wireless N compliant card which isn’t actually N compliant.

I hope that helps.

Jason

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