WiFi is slow

Hi All -
This is my first post and I just bought the Aspire One with XP a few days ago. Right out of the box I was most impressed by its looks and construction. My main purpose is to use it to access the internet via WiFi. Today I got on the internet with no problem and was able to access a WiFi connection at 56Mb/sec. I was very pleased by that and was hoping for lightining downloads. To my surprise my download speeds ranged from 32 - 74KB where it averaged around 32 or so. I was very disappointed at the low speed but still much faster than my dial-up at 3KB ! LOL After reading online I discovered that connections at 11Mb should have downloads around 5.5Mb.

So I was wandering why the slow speed ? Do I need to update the WiFi card drivers ? Bios too ?

But in general I am very pleased so far. Down the road I plan to connect via CAT 5 Crossover to my desktop to acces internet at 3KB LOL.

 

This has been covered numerous times, so please use the search in the future.

Go into the device settings for your atheros wireless card and disable the power saving options when running on battery. If that doesnt work, then this might turn into an interesting post.

 

I was plugged into AC when accessing the internet

 

I have the Acer One 120 gig drive and 1 gig ram, running XP. If you look around the Wifi postings you will find details on the fix that seems to work--

1. Turn OFF QoS -- go to control panel, network connections, properties, and uncheck the box.

2. Upgrade to 3305 bios

3. Turn off power saving (mine is set to "normal")

4. Upgrade the driver to version on Microsoft web site (Windows Update).... I have version 160

Mine is running bios 3303, microsoft update driver, power setting to normal, QoS UNCHECKED-- works just fine now.

 

I seem to still have a slow WiFi connection...

I have the latest BIOS (that I know if...3305).

I'm running the latest 160 driver for the wireless adapter.

I've turned off the power-save option in my device properties.

Basically, I've done everything that I've seen to do, but my network speed according to speedtest.net, I can never surpass 5400 kbps. As a control, my other laptop and desktop both reach almost 18,000 kbps (I have the fastest uverse internet available in my area).

What gives??

-s009

 

I have been able to reach speeds as high as 76/KBs on a 56Mb connection. I have read that it is not unheard of reaching 5.5Mbits on a 10Mb/s connection. This connection speed was reached BEFORE I turned off the WiFi power savings. I also have yet to update my WiFi drivers or BIOS.

I am very NERVOUS about upgrading my BIOS as I have read that some people have 'screwed' up thier computers. I know that a bad BIOS FLASH install will make the computer COMPLETELY useless.

I have read that some people have purchased "N" WiFi cards that are rated at 130Mb/s. I would love to know the throughput on that kind of connection !

 

I would like to keep this thread alive because after much search, i have found some thread addressing this issue of broadband speeds not being used by this Aspire one. I have spent many hours searching the net and updating various drivers and bios to the latest available as of yesterday. The only useful improvement came from "turning off power save mode" in the wifi card properties advanced tab. This boosted my wireless speed from about 3Mbps to near 4mbps occasionally spiking above to 4.5mbps. This is nothing compared to what my other laptop and destop at home deliver. They also have wireless G cards and deliver close to their full potential.... somewhere between 12Mbps to 25Mbps depending on the congestion near my home. My home is allocated 20Mbps but often delivers speeds upto 30Mbps in spikes on my cable broadband. Even when i connect my acer aspire one AOA 150 to my ethernet, i do not see speeds over 5Mbps which is 25% of its peak potential i think. I have done extensive searches and reading on the net. So far the only explanation i find is in the thread titled "Re:better xp experience" in this site. They are basically suggesting how to make XP faster on these netbooks. I am thinking the bottleneck is not the network drivers, but perhaps the filesystem itself (upon read/write) and the inability of Windows platforms to efficiently run on a limited CPU power. The lack of a quick HDD on this netbook is a added problem i think. I have not searched extensively the acer support groups. If there is an official word from acer on how to address this problem to improve the network bandwidth, please add it to this thread. I am yet to try out the various Windows performance improvements suggested in that thread. Will report back here when i get to it in Christmas time. Meanwhile, if anyone has solved the problem addressed in this thread, please post a reply here. Thanks.

 

Unfortunatly, I don't think that is the case. I had poor, scratch that, lousy performance over Wi-FI on my D150 with G. I followed all of the suggested hacks/tweeks and suggestions. I even removed Antivirus. I could plug in an ethernet cable and transfer gigs of data at 100% bandwidth. It would eat up a ton of my CPU Cycles, but it could transfer data at close to the 100Mbps mark. The bar in networking tab in task manager would be flatlined against the top of the graph. The Athros Wi-Fi was usless for anything other then web surfing and light/slow downloading of files.

Once I switched my netbook to "N", I am gettting similar performance Via Wi-Fi as I was while wired. While connected at 300Mbps, the bar stays in the 33% range. Altho it shows a much clearer Heartbeat going over and under 33% depending on what I am transfering.

My netbook is a bit modified so that might put me out of this conversation, but I think the Athros card might have been a POS IMO. That or it needs driver tweeking. But, the tiny little atom kept up!

 

Hi Plastikman.

Pardon my ignorance but what do you meant by "Once I switched over to "N", What is "N" and what does it entail?

Regards