Need help getting N speeds with wireless adapter

[jtyson]

I apologize if this has been asked or explained before. Honestly, I am probably not advanced enough to be running linux because I have a very hard time understanding all the commands and codes and such. Hopefully someone who is much better at this can simplify this for me. I'm running Linux Mint 11 LXDE

My issue is, I have my desktop set up where I need it to be wireless. I was using a Belkin Wireless G USB adapter and it was working fine, but it is pretty slow. 54 mbps.

So I did a little searching online, bought a different belkin N+ adapter because that is what my router is, and turned out, I couldn't get it to work. So I sold it, and bought a D-Link DWA 140 because I read on here somewhere that it works right out of the box. However, that wasn't the case. I managed to search and find this thread below which I followed the directions written by TBABill on the first page. Now the adapter is working, but it is only at 48 mbps. Not even as fast as my wireless G adapter.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1681742


At the end of the thread, it mentions how the guy got upwards of 100 mbps but linked to this thread below, which I can't understand for the life of me. What do I need to do to get wireless N speeds?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1342593

I'm really sorry if the answer is right in front of me and I have no clue. I appreciate any help anyone can give a newbie who has no real business working on something this advanced.

[wayne128]

just sanity check...

do you by chance set your wireless router to g-speed?

what is your wireless setting in the router?
what is the channel bandwidth like 20M, 40M?

[jtyson]

just sanity check...

do you by chance set your wireless router to g-speed?

what is your wireless setting in the router?
what is the channel bandwidth like 20M, 40M?

I have no idea how to set a router's speed. I bought a Belkin wireless N+ is there a physical switch somewhere on this thing I am missing?
How do I check the setting?
What is channel bandwidth and how do I find out what mine is?

I'm sorry I have such limited knowledge and information, and I appreciate you helping me figure this out

[wayne128]

I have not used any Belkin before, I do not have its documentation to refer to.

I can just describe a bit on other common wireless router setup.
Usually when it is shipped to you, it has a default set up.
The admin and its password are in your documentation, you need to find that out.

For mine and many other, usually by connecting a Wired LAN cable ( ethernet cable) to router's LAN port, and on a browser, typing this ip would lead to the admin page

http://192.168.1.1

Once you are in the admin page you can check all the settings..

hope it get you start somewhere..
good luck

[jtyson]

That link didn't work, but I managed to find one that did get me to my router's settings. It is set on both G and N and I put it on 20/40 channel bandwidth, but it was set on 20 only. My connection is still 48 mbps, though I did notice last night that it reached 54 mbps, the same as my wireless g adapter. Still hoping for something much higher than that though.

[jtyson]

Just realised I forgot to read the "Before you post in here" thread. Here is the information that I got when I put that code into my terminal

blazer12@blazer12-014 ~ $ sudo /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/mintWifi.py
[sudo] password for blazer12:
-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 Ralink STA ESSID:"Belkin_N+_B4F690" Nickname:"RT2870STA"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.432 GHz Access Point: 00:22:75:B4:F6:90
Bit Rate=48 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality=90/100 Signal level:-73 dBm Noise level:-59 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1c:25:57:ff:ab
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:19

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:66 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:66 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:4756 (4.7 KB) TX bytes:4756 (4.7 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 84:c9:b2:02:38:1e
inet addr:192.168.2.12 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: 2002:4c1a:6eba:1234:86c9:b2ff:fe02:381e/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: fe80::86c9:b2ff:fe02:381e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:795785 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:173495 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:473549210 (473.5 MB) TX bytes:28116632 (28.1 MB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
Server: 192.168.2.1
Address: 192.168.2.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.37
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.34
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.36
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.39
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.35
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.46
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.41
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.33
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.38
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.40
Name: google.com
Address: 74.125.227.32

[Aging Technogeek]

Two quick questions,

1. Are you the only one connecting to the router wirelessly? If there is another computer connecting to the router using a wireless G adapter, this can force the router into wireless G mode for all users.

2. What is the speed of your Internet Service provider? You can have a wireless N router, but if your service provider is only feeding you at 48 mb/s, that is all you will get from the router.

[jtyson]

I have my Motorola Xoom and my Droid X connected to the wifi. I have no idea if they are G or N or what they may be. I also have an acer aspire one laptop that I use a couple times a month, but it is off now, so that shouldn't affect it all the time right? Also, I am just assuming that it is a wireless G connection.

As for speed of the ISP, I have no idea how to check that, could you point me in the right direction? I have Comcast internet.

[wayne128]

Wireless N likes to have 40MHz bandwidth. So set it to 20/40 or auto in the router.

On my win7 laptop using intel wireless N, the driver had some properties to set, I also set it to 40MHz bandwidth to achieve N speed.

Regarding ISP speed, when you purchase a plan you pay for the speed...
One quick way to check your speed via ISP is to directly test it with ISP server that offer speedtest.
If such a service is not available, then use one of the following ( you can google speedtest to get long list ).
http://www.speedtest.net/
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
when you do speedtest, you should choose the server that is nearest to you.
However you can also test other servers that are half a globe away from you to see how your internet speed looks like when you connect to these far-away server.

[wyrdoak]

Have you checked this?

[jtyson]

I have the router set on 20/40mhz.

As for ISP speed, I tried the speedtest.net link, and I got between 13-14mbps. I did the test at about 1:30am so there shouldn't have been too many neighbors online that would affect it. I have no idea what I pay for, but that number seems outrageously low for the money I spend, so I will be calling them tomorrow and figuring out how my service can match what I pay.

I am a bit more familiar with settings for drivers on windows, but on my linux machine, I have no idea how to change any settings for this adapter to receive N speeds.

Regarding the picture posted by wyrdoak, yes, I did check that, and it is set the same as it is in your picture. Is that not the correct option?

[Aging Technogeek]

You should not need to change anything in the OS to use a wireless N router. If anything needs to be changed or adjusted, it will most likely be in the router, not the computer (except for possibly needing proprietary drivers for your wireless card or adapter dongle). I have set up and maintained several large wireless networks, both G and N, and never needed to do anything to any computer running Linux.

Either my wireless card or adapter worked OTB, or I got one that did. I have had excellent results with the ZyDAS ZD 1211B adapter for wireless G and the Cisco Linksys 600N for wireless N. I did need to install the Broadcom proprietary drivers for one older laptop that used a Broadcom wireless card, but that was not a problem. Just hooked up to the router with a cable temporarily and installed via Jockey.

Linux support for wireless network cards and adapters has improved tremendously over the last few years. It is getting to the point where it is difficult to find a card that is not supported.

[jtyson]

You should not need to change anything in the OS to use a wireless N router. If anything needs to be changed or adjusted, it will most likely be in the router, not the computer (except for possibly needing proprietary drivers for your wireless card or adapter dongle). I have set up and maintained several large wireless networks, both G and N, and never needed to do anything to any computer running Linux.

Either my wireless card or adapter worked OTB, or I got one that did. I have had excellent results with the ZyDAS ZD 1211B adapter for wireless G and the Cisco Linksys 600N for wireless N. I did need to install the Broadcom proprietary drivers for one older laptop that used a Broadcom wireless card, but that was not a problem. Just hooked up to the router with a cable temporarily and installed via Jockey.

Linux support for wireless network cards and adapters has improved tremendously over the last few years. It is getting to the point where it is difficult to find a card that is not supported.

My wireless router works fine. I do get a wireless signal, it just isn't at N speeds.

The proprietary drivers you mentioned....what is that?

I search and search and search and there are dozens of threads saying this card works or that card works, but you have to blacklist this and add that. Even the ones that supposedly work out of the box I find threads about saying how someone had to do one thing or another to make it function properly.

I looked at the Cisco Linksys 600N, but I can't use a PCI card. My tower sits in a cubby in a desk that is enclosed completely other than the holes for the wires to go through and the front door. I had a belkin wireless usb adapter that worked perfectly plug and play but it was a G. I want something faster. That is why I bought this DWA 140. I'm tired of 5 minute non HD youtube videos taking 3 minutes to buffer

[jtyson]

Well apparently I am only paying for up to 20mbps. I didn't realize how much it cost to have 100+mbps. $200/month. That seems outrageous. Guess I will just learn to deal with the lack of speed. I don't need fast youtube videos that bad. Thanks to everyone for the help. If in the future I upgrade my package and still have any issues with my wireless adapter, I'll bring this thread back to life.

[xox101]

20Mbps is plenty for Youtube. Check your router's wireless settings again and look for an option to switch between TKIP or AES and set it to AES if necessary. TKIP uses software for the encryption whereas AES uses hardware. Therefore a network set to TKIP will be slower than one set to AES.

The Atheros card in one of my laptops running Windows needs AES enabled in the router to get above a stated connection speed of 54Mbps.

Be aware that some older equipment may not work with AES and Windows will need the connection type changed to work with it. Linux doesn't care.

Select Connection in Windows connections in the taskbar, right click on your connection and select properties.

A wired connection will always be faster than wireless. No signal drop or interference so if possible try running an ethernet cable from your router to your PC.

And be careful keeping it in an enclosed space. Electronics like cool air!