Help me optimise my web access pleeeeeeeeeeease :)

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Help me optimise my web access pleeeeeeeeeeease :)

12 posts & 10 voices | Started 3 months ago by on and on | Latest reply from scaled

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on and on - Member

A bit long winded but please stick with me.

I want to get the most from my web access at home.
I currently have a 20 meg Virgin media connection with one of their modems and a Netgear G wireless router from 2006.

I use a -
Sony Vaio E series laptop which is around 1.5 years old ( Not a bad spec )
HP laptop (cant remember the spec as it’s my wife’s work machine- 2 months old)
Ipad 2
Iphone 4s
Xbox 360
Tivo box

The Sony Vaio is seeing 54 MBPS so I assume the current ‘bottle neck’ is the wireless router being a G series?!?!?!

If I swap to an N rated wireless router in the 700-900 MBPS range what would be the weak link in the system ?
Would the modem become a bottle neck ?

I just want to make sure I’m doing the right thing before I drop £120 on a modem (Netgear N900 WNDR4500 or Apple Airport Extreme)

Any help would be greatly appreciated

EDIT - Virgin are supposed to be giving me 80 Meg in Oct so that’s also a consideration.

Posted 3 months ago #
wwaswas - Member

I'm *fairly* certain that the wireless bit runs at the slowest speed of any connected device so if any of your devices is 54mbps then you won't see more than that on any of them?

Posted 3 months ago #
on and on - Member

now I have the Ipad I don't tend to use the laptop as much so that shouldn't be an issue.

All current devices can run on N so i guess it's pegged back because of the Netgears limitations on G.

Posted 3 months ago #
trail_rat - Member

i bet its your router causing the bottle neck

the operator supplied netgear router was seriously throttling my parents connection

ended up replacing it for a linksys router for about 60 quid - difference is night and day !

Posted 3 months ago #
AdamW - Member

Some routers (netgear was one, I think) run two antennae and hence two SSIDs: one for G and one for N.

Saying that, if your broadband is 20Mb/s then any requests above that are going to wait. Having an internal gigabit network isn't going to make your broadband speed any faster, only device-to-device within your network.

Or do I have the wrong end of the stick here?

EDIT: saying that I stopped using WiFi for AppleTV/PS3 as streaming was utter pants on G or N!

Posted 3 months ago #
molgrips - Member

What's the problem? Slow web browsing? The problem is more likely to be somewhere on the internet between you and the website to be honest.

If Virgin give you 80mb I'd be amazed if they have enough bandwidth to give that much to many people at once. That number is only a theoretical maximum after all. In the same way that the speed limit on the M4 between London and Reading is 70mph....

Posted 3 months ago #
sharkbait - Member

The week link will nearly always be 'the internet' as servers may not be able to serve data fast enough to reach the supposed speed of your internet connection.

Posted 3 months ago #
spooky_b329 - Member

Your web access is 20Mbs, or 2.25MBs. Better to convert to MB as thats what we use to measure storage and file sizes, Mbs are only used for data transfer speeds.

Your home network is 54Mbs, or 6.75MBs.

So at the moment, the broadband is the limiting factor. When Virgin upgrade you to 80Mbs, that'll be 10MBs, so technically your network will be the bottleneck and could be upgraded. Or you could just plug in with a Cat5 cable, which is 100Mbs, or 12.5MBs, more than your broadband

An 800Mbs device is 100MBs, so a bit OTT to be honest, unless you are really geeky about performance.

Posted 3 months ago #
randomjeremy - Member

Good luck getting 80mbps throughput

Posted 3 months ago #
marting - Member

All of the Spooky's numbers (while correct) are *peak* speeds. For big files, streamed movies, music etc, what matters is the *average* speed. And for small files, they're typically small enough that the peak doesn't matter.
Average speed depends on a bunch of things, including the peak speeds and loading on the servers, connections in between and your local Virgin network. Run a broadband speed test to see what you really get, rather than just looking at the reported wireless connection speed. I bet it's materially less than the peak.

Posted 3 months ago #
on and on - Member

thanks for all the input

Just got off the phone to Virgin.(thought id give them a quick call to see what I could get for free )
As of the 9th Feb I'll be on the 50mg service and have an N rated 'SuperHub' for an extra £2 a month.

I'll see how much difference this makes before making any other changes, I'm sure this will make a noticeable difference.

Posted 3 months ago #
scaled - Member

Get rid of the horrible firmware on your current router and stick DD-WRT on there, from your original post i'd suggest that you'd quite enjoy it

Posted 3 months ago #

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