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Wifi signal dropping from 5 bars to 4 and internet goes to a crawl


NuComer

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Hey guys,

 

lately I've been having this problem, everything seems to be working fine but out of nowhere my wifi signal drops one bar and my internet starts to slow down massively.

 

My wifi adapter is a Linksys WMP54G

 

My router is Huanwei HG530

 

Thanks for any advice guys!.

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Hi NC. That's an awfully big box that you've opened up there :)

 

How old is your hardware? Do you get the same results from various wireless clients, or is it only happening on one specific client (i.e. a single smart phone, laptop or remote desktop?)

 

Do you have any other radio transmitting devices in the office or residence that might be interfering with wireless signal from the wireless router? Is the router set to auto-negotiate the best radio channel or do you have a static channel set?

 

Do you have any neighbors near enough to hijack into your wireless network? Is the wireless network secured and if so what wireless networking security protocol? i.e. WEP, WPA etc....

 

Have you measured the actual transmission strength of the radio signal from various points within the office or residence? Simply saying that you drop one bar doesn't tell us that much.

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Woah, thank you for taking the time to write this.

 

How old is your hardware? Do you get the same results from various wireless clients, or is it only happening on one specific client (i.e. a single smart phone, laptop or remote desktop?)

 

My adapter might be 1.4 years old at most and my router is around 2 months old.

 

I only use my Desktop computer to connect to this router as of today, but around a month ago I used to use my laptop a lot with this router and did not feel any slowdowns, even though the signal strength was never @ 5 bars.

 

Do you have any other radio transmitting devices in the office or residence that might be interfering with wireless signal from the wireless router? Is the router set to auto-negotiate the best radio channel or do you have a static channel set?

 

I have, 2 wireless phones that have their base pretty far away from the router and have not noticed any connection to me using the phone and the signal strength going down.

 

I also have 2 cellphones turned on all the time, these are a lot closer to the router.

 

Do you have any neighbors near enough to hijack into your wireless network? Is the wireless network secured and if so what wireless networking security protocol? i.e. WEP, WPA etc....

 

I do have neighbors near enough to do that.

 

The wireless network is secure using WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK. The router is not using the default password and it's using TKIP/AES encryption.(No idea what these mean, but it says so on the router RUI :P).

 

Have you measured the actual transmission strength of the radio signal from various points within the office or residence? Simply saying that you drop one bar doesn't tell us that much.

 

I have not done this, since my router is like 3-4 feets away from my PC and I have it an a tall cabinet(? don't know how to call this piece of furniture in English, but I think this works lol).

 

Hi NC. That's an awfully big box that you've opened up there :)

 

How old is your hardware? Do you get the same results from various wireless clients, or is it only happening on one specific client (i.e. a single smart phone, laptop or remote desktop?)

 

Do you have any other radio transmitting devices in the office or residence that might be interfering with wireless signal from the wireless router? Is the router set to auto-negotiate the best radio channel or do you have a static channel set?

 

Do you have any neighbors near enough to hijack into your wireless network? Is the wireless network secured and if so what wireless networking security protocol? i.e. WEP, WPA etc....

 

Have you measured the actual transmission strength of the radio signal from various points within the office or residence? Simply saying that you drop one bar doesn't tell us that much.

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You're very welcome. We are here to help. As far as measuring the wireless signal strength, that is probably a non-issue since your client is so close to the wireless router. However, if you're curious about signal strength and integrity there are free utilities out there for measuring those types of things - even more convenient, if you are using an Android or Apple cell phone they have an app that does just that :)

 

Your wireless network sounds like it is adequately protected from intrusion or hacking, but you can always double check this by viewing the router logs. Under client connection history it will show you what devices are (and what devices have) connected to your network.

 

Personally, it sounds to me like the network slowdown problem is related to a problem other than your signal dropping from 5 bars to 4 bars.

 

Has there been any rhyme or reason to the slowdowns? i.e. a certain time or day of the week? Have you ran a tracert command from your client PC to an external server such as google.com or yahoo.com? If so how many hops are occurring and are there any timeouts? Have you ran any internet speed tests (speedguide.net etc.?)

 

Lastly - have you checked your PC lately with a malware detection program (i.e. Malwarebytes) and are you currently running an up to date anti-virus program?

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Has there been any rhyme or reason to the slowdowns? i.e. a certain time or day of the week? Have you ran a tracert command from your client PC to an external server such as google.com or yahoo.com? If so how many hops are occurring and are there any timeouts? Have you ran any internet speed tests (speedguide.net etc.?)

 

I haven't been able to identify any pattern and I've been actively trying to do so for the past few days. It's not at a certain time of the day or anything of sorts, as far as I can see, it's kinda random.

 

I haven't done a tracert command. How do I do this? and when should I do it? when my connection is slowing down or just leave it running until something happens?.

 

I've ran speed tests and ping tests. When the signal is @ 4 bars I get like 0.33DL/0.10UL with a high ping. When my signal is normal I get my normal speeds 1.2mb/0.20kb UL (crappy dominican internet). This is what leads me to believe that my signal going down has to be connected to getting low speeds.

 

have you checked your PC lately with a malware detection program (i.e. Malwarebytes) and are you currently running an up to date anti-virus program?

 

Did this yesterday and did not find anything out of the usual.

 

On another note. I was talking with my service provider, they actually told me that my router is an "entry level hardware", nice words just to say it sucks and gave me instructions to put it even closer to my desktop, which I did. Any changes I see I'll post them inmediatly.

 

Thanks again!.

 

You're very welcome. We are here to help. As far as measuring the wireless signal strength, that is probably a non-issue since your client is so close to the wireless router. However, if you're curious about signal strength and integrity there are free utilities out there for measuring those types of things - even more convenient, if you are using an Android or Apple cell phone they have an app that does just that :)

 

Your wireless network sounds like it is adequately protected from intrusion or hacking, but you can always double check this by viewing the router logs. Under client connection history it will show you what devices are (and what devices have) connected to your network.

 

Personally, it sounds to me like the network slowdown problem is related to a problem other than your signal dropping from 5 bars to 4 bars.

 

Has there been any rhyme or reason to the slowdowns? i.e. a certain time or day of the week? Have you ran a tracert command from your client PC to an external server such as google.com or yahoo.com? If so how many hops are occurring and are there any timeouts? Have you ran any internet speed tests (speedguide.net etc.?)

 

Lastly - have you checked your PC lately with a malware detection program (i.e. Malwarebytes) and are you currently running an up to date anti-virus program?

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I don't know the first thing about Huanwei routers, so I"m always hesitant to criticize something I know nothing about, especially for our forum members that live outside of North America. Interesting that your ISP would make that observation though, so it's worth consideration I looked at the picture and the router doesn't appear to have any external antenna, so that would make me suspicious on anything except a premium router.

 

Tracert command is easy to execute;

 

Open command prompt;

 

Type;

 

tracert www.yahoo.com

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I don't know the first thing about Huanwei routers, so I"m always hesitant to criticize something I know nothing about, especially for our forum members that live outside of North America. Interesting that your ISP would make that observation though, so it's worth consideration I looked at the picture and the router doesn't appear to have any external antenna, so that would make me suspicious on anything except a premium router.

 

Tracert command is easy to execute;

 

Open command prompt;

 

Type;

 

tracert www.yahoo.com

 

Well, this router came with the signing of my contract service, so idk what to expect from it :/.

 

So, my signal went down a bar and I took a ping test

70665401.png

 

And then I took a speedtest.

2238086161.png

 

Now the signal is back up to 5 bars and look at the difference

 

PING

70665714.png

 

SPEED

2238097632.png

 

All this with the router literally on top of my desk.

 

This happens a few times a day.

Edited by NuComer

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Guess if I were personally going to start somewhere it would be with the router. You can use any router you want, assuming that you want to spend the money to buy your own. Do you have a friend with a spare that they might let you borrow so you could test the theory that it's a wireless router problem? Personally I'm not a huge fan of modem/wireless router combo units and provide to have each individually.

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Guess if I were personally going to start somewhere it would be with the router. You can use any router you want, assuming that you want to spend the money to buy your own. Do you have a friend with a spare that they might let you borrow so you could test the theory that it's a wireless router problem? Personally I'm not a huge fan of modem/wireless router combo units and provide to have each individually.

 

I can't think of a friend that might have a router laying around. But for the time being I'm gonna try to just use a cable, since I had to move my router anyways, and see how that goes.

 

Thanks for all the help provided man.

 

If anyone else have any other suggestions I'm all ears.

Edited by NuComer

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