Gaming Internet speed woes

[Lanlan]

My internet speed has been pretty crappy lately, and I have no idea why. My roommate's speed is just fine. We're both using USB dongles, his computer is about 4 feet from the router and has great speed. Mine is about twelve feet away, with a wood and plasterboard wall in between. I have 5 bars on my wifi signal thingy. I'm using a 5 dollar dongle I got on newegg. It had good reviews so what the hell. I don't think its the donge because this only just started happening. I had good speed with it before. My brother is normally on my laptop directly between me and the router so could that be causing it? When downloading a game on Steam it fluctuates between like 200 kb/s to like 1.5 mb/s. This only recently started. What's causing it?

 

[TheRedfox]

A fact: all wifi adapters under $20 just sucks, get yourself a good 5ghz Wifi-N adapter

 

[Sicklyboy]

Or... rather than just a "you're screwed deal with it" post, how about this - when you notice your speed drop, go into your network settings, right click your Wireless Network Adapter, Properties, and what is your network speed listed as?

Do it every once in a while, especially if you notice your speed going up or down while using it. Does your listed speed fluctuate any?

 

[kenjixx]

is your neighborhood full with wifi user? the wifi channel that you using now might be crowded.. try switch to another channel

 

[Originality]

IIRC, 5Ghz WiFi has better penetration than 2.5Ghz WiFi. The wall could be interfering with your connection. The test for that is simple - spend a few hours in your roommate's room.

Having a laptop inbetween the connection does affect the reception, but not enough to cause noticeable speed difference.

It's normal for Steam to be erratic in its download speeds. Sometimes I only see 75KBs, sometimes I see 2MBs (more or less the limit for an 8Gbs connection, and I don't want Rydian explaining how that's impossible for me - I already know but stats are stats and that's what they tell me!).

WiFi channels being overpopulated (especially channels 1 and 10) definitely causes some interference. So do cordless phones (usually channels 1 and 4) and unshielded electronics (old TVs, etc). These things contribute to WiFi "noise", but don't make WiFi as unstable as people like to think. Just extra compounding factors.

 

[Fishaman P]

Originality, I'm pretty sure 2.4GHz Wi-Fi penetrates better than 5GHz, it's just that there are so many 2.4GHz signals and few 5GHz ones.
Example: TV signals are in the hundreds of MHz range, and they go for MILES.

As for the download speed: Steam is erratic. I used my PC on a 100Mbit line (yes, the line was that fast, not just the ports) and Steam averaged 1mbps. Ookla's speed tester (AKA http://www.speedtest.net/) gives a much more reliable figure.

Finally, quit calling 200kbps low. I'm lucky if I get 75kbps with a wired connection.

 

[Lanlan]

Well we moved to a different apartment and so far my speed has been much higher, same ISP and router, we just had them transfer everything to the new place. Averaging about 2.5 mb/s on steam now, so no complaints