Intel Ultimate N 633 Poor Performance Speeds

I purchased this card ( Amazon.com: Intel Ultimate N 633ANHMW IEEE 802.11n (draft) Wi-Fi Adapter - Mini PCI Express - 450Mbps, Bulk: Electronics) based on the reviews and feedback from members of this board.

I also purchased an extra antenna ( Amazon.com: Tyco Wifi & Bluetooth Antenna: Everything Else). The product came with 2 antennas and I wasn't sure if the color of the antenna matters, so I just picked one.

I didn't want to take apart my laptop again, so I decided to coil the third antenna around the bottom of the laptop and holding it in place with electrical tape while making sure to keep it away from any metal (I read that this causes interference). This was based on what I read in a previous thread in the past that I'm unable to locate. This is what another member did with no problem. The default 2 antennae in the G73 were installed on spots 1 and 2 on the card, while the extra one was installed on spot 3.

I'm getting horrible download and upload speeds at the University that I attend. Here are my results:



My classmate using a Samsung Series 7 Laptop with stock network card is gettings 40 mbps download speeds and 17mbps upload speeds.

I checked on the Intel website and made sure that I have the current drivers. I also made sure that the card that I bought on Amazon was not one of the Lenovo OEM brands.

Can anyone help me troubleshoot this problem?
This card is working even worse than the stock G73 card.

 

Which speed does it say if you open the Status of the connection?
It can has several reasons for those lousy speeds.
Which driver version did you install?
Try to unhook the third antenna and check again.

pato

 

Try doing a measurement just across the wifi instead of over the internet. Using speedtest.com is a very poor test for wifi speed.

 

If I open the window for "wireless network connection status", the speed says 54 mbps.

The driver version is 15.1.1.1

How do I do a measurement across wifi?

 

What's the security type in your university? WEP or WPA2? If you want something faster than 54mbps the encryption type has to be WPA/WPA2 or better.

 

It says WPA2 Enterprise.

It just seems weird that there is such a huge difference in speeds from my classmate. I'm pretty sure that my network card should be faster if not at least as fast as his. He's getting 40 mbps while I'm only hovering around 1.

 

Yea it's kinda weird. Did you try it without the 3rd antenna connected to the 3rd slot and just have 1 and 2 connected?

 

I haven't tried it without the 3rd antenna. I can give it a shot. Does it matter in which the order that the antennae are attached? Also, does it matter which color of the 2 antenna I bought to use? There is a white and black one that came together.

 

Order for 1 & 2 doesn't matter, but not for the 3rd one. I believe the 3rd antenna you got is the flat type, ending with a piece of plastic like square, not the tiny board kind that they use in Asus laptops. Also you mentioned you didn't want to disassemble the laptop to install the 3rd antenna. I assumed that you placed the antenna somewhere at the buttom while 1 & 2 are placed right behind the monitor. If one's signal isn't as good as others or falls too far apart from what the other antennas are performing, you'll get lag spikes/package loss.

 

The antenna numbers are written on card, so just connect 1 and 2 and leave 3 out.
Which speed shows your classmates pc? 54Mbit/s is 802.11a or 802.11g, but not 802.11n. Also, if you're connected with 54Mbit/s, the maximum you'll reach is around 20Mbit/s. It's always around 50-65% lower than the advertised speed.
Do you have a file server at your school? If yes, then copy a >1 GB large file to your computer and divide the filesize/time it took (measure with stopclock!). That will give you a realistic measurement. But yeah, Wifi is getting slower by the ammount of connected clients, bluetooth, baby phones, microwaves, .... so they could also influence your results.

 

As far as installation goes, I don't actually mind taking the laptop apart since I upgraded the ram on the G73 but the issue is routing the antenna through to the screen. That part of the disassembly is too much for me to handle. During disassembly for my ram upgrade, I wasn't able to find a spot to route the router. If you know of one I'd be glad to try it out.

The one I purchased looks exactly like the picture on the amazon link I provided - the square thing. Is there another version I can purchase? Based on reviews for these kinds of antenna they seem to work for everyone else.

I've changed the adapter settings to prefer 5.2 ghz. I'm not sure if it helped, but my speeds have improved - although nowhere near what my classmate is getting. I feel like for the card that I picked up it should at least be able to perform as well. I'm not sure what speed is display on his laptop, but mine now shows 144mbps in the network status.

 

Well the square one will also work, however if you place it at the buttom, the radio will have to penetrate the motherboard before going anywhere, it could also be interfering the actual bandwidth. If your university doesn't support 450mbps triple link transfer then adding the 3rd antenna doesn't do much. 3rd antenna doesn't increase the coverage range, only adds support for wireless 450mbps transfer.

You should check if your classmates can get 240/270/300 mbps when connected to uni wireless hub. If not then your uni only allows a maximum wireless transfer rate of 144mbps. If that's the case then the 3rd antenna doesn't have any use.

Also placing the 3rd antenna at the buttom might cause connection drop/bandwidth decrease/package loss due to the uneven condition when compared to the other 2 antennas. If I were you I'd remove it unless I can reach behind the screen.

 

3rd antenna improves diversity send/recieve, and MIMO capability. So it is useful even on <450mbit connections.

 

Well I personally tried it. I found it did nothing unless I use a router that can do 450mbps.

 

Do you have any suggestions as to where I could route the 3rd antenna?

 

What I did on my G73jw was sandwich it between the back panel and the SSD. But it was giving me drop outs every once in a while (once every 2 days). After I removed the 3rd antenna, drop out doesn't occur until 10 days later.

If you plan to route it to anywhere other than behind the top of the screen, I'd say just remove it to prevent drop outs affected by placing it anywhere near the motherboard.

 

I've tried taking out the 3rd antenna, and I'm getting 16 mbps download speeds and 14 mbps download speeds.

It's much improvement over before, but it still seems to be lacking. For such a supposedly good card, it's performing rather poorly still. Any suggestions?

Should I just have Asus install it for me? I don't feel I'm getting my money's worth for this card - especially when the speeds can't even match a lesser card.

 

You need to see whether or not the issue is the wireless, or the internet. Testing the internet through the wireles isn't really proving anything. You also need to see if your buddy can consistently get those speeds, test at he same physical location as him, and also try at like 4am when not many people are on.

If you are getting a 144mbit connection then there is enough bandwidh to get 40mbit to you, but there may be many many other users on, so its going to be really un-predictable.

 

Speed testing in Uni network is a bad idea as it's a shared network . You should go to a friend's house that has 30-50mb connection and see if you can get anywhere close to that.

 

I tried another test today with my classmate side by side. His download is 5 mbps, and here's mine



I'm baffled.

 

As has been mentioned SEVERAL TIMES in this thread a speed test at speed test.net is a USELESS metric!

 

Well, your upload speed is at 9.71Mbps so that is a good indicator that there is more at work than just the wireless adapter.

Yep, doing a speedtest on a university network to measure wireless performance isn't something i'd call a reliable test.

I'm going to suggest a few things:

1: Make sure your wireless adapter is set to maximum performance



2: Measure network transfer performance instead of Internet, preferable wireless to wired, you can do this by either transferring data to a network drive or through sharing (you could do this at home for example). Here's an example of what i got with an Intel 6200 on a Linksys E3000:

I get about half that wireless to wireless.

3: As suggested before, try it at a friend's place with a fast Internet connection.

4: University networks usually have a ton of APs all on different channels so you could very well be connected to a different AP than your friend or the network is prioritizing your friend for some reason. Here's how many APs there are in range in my office at university:



5: For reference here the speedtest at my university (clearly i'm not fully utilizing my NIC here)

 

Sorry that I keep using this as a measurement. I don't have broadband at home yet, and the school's internet is the only way I can test to see if my card is working at it's full potential. There are no dorms since this is a medical campus, so it makes it a bit of a hassle to have to go to a classmate's house just to test my wifi.

1) I can't see the image that you've attached, so I'm not sure what settings to adjust.

2) Since the internet I have at home is not broadband, I'm not sure this would work. I don't think this function is available at school either as we don't have any shared folders that can be accessed wirelessly. Only school computers have shared folders that have limited access.

3) I've tested my connection (via speedtest) at a friend's. Here are the results:


This was done while all of the roommates were asleep and I was the only one connected to the wireless.

4) Can't see this image

5) How can you fully utilize your NIC? I'd like to get the best performance out of this card.

Thanks again.

 

General question, can anyone see the images by clicking on them?

I can see them just fine by clicking on the links, but if no one can see them i'll upload them on an image host.

For point 2), i do not mean testing with Internet. Hook computer 1 with a cable, connect your laptop via wireless, set a shared folder and transfer a large file.

 

Ah, I'm sorry I did not realize they were links. I can see the pictures now.

For Point 2, I'm not sure what you mean by hooking computer 1 with a cable. I have a desktop right now connected to my home router with LAN. Is that what you mean? After making a shared folder, am I transferring the large from my laptop or am I downloading it to the laptop?

Thanks again.

 

If your friend have a 20/5 comcast then the speedtest.net is fine.

Dragging a folder across you network will also need to factor in your router.

I am not sure what are you hunting for when you say "best performance".you can validate if the card is able to work at peak performance but then you will need to have a proper setup with router and attached computer/NAS.
If you are trying to get best bandwidth available from school network, that will probably more about their configuration, policy and traffic you using. My previous school will throttle me down to no where if I start alot of p2p links(although it is blocked regardless how many links).

 

It doesn't matter which. The overall speed will depend on how many streams you are using (150, 300 or 450Mbps) and what router you have, seeing the speed as well as the having that info will at least allow us to determine whether your adapter is performing as it should when you're at home. In any case, unless you have the absolute worse wireless N router, you should be at least getting 20Mbps with file transfers, with a decent wireless N router, it will more than likely hit closer to 100Mbps with 2 streams (more if you have a 5GHz network at home).

 

OK, so I finally go around to dragging a large file over a shared folder. It took me a long time how to set up a shared folder (didn't know how to do it). I created a shared folder on my laptop, and then I placed a 3gb file from my Desktop into the folder. The fastest it would go is 7 mbps. This appears to be slow based on what you guys are saying.

This is the router I have: http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Conc...id=1348186632&sr=8-7&keywords=trendnet+router

My laptop is connected to the 5GHZ network. As far as router configuration goes, I'm not very savvy in that area so I only did the basic setup of creating the 2 networks for each band available it. There were not setting tweaks. I was using this router at my previous apartment with broadband. I was getting very good speeds with this laptop using the default stock Atheros card that game with the G73.

I'm assuming that this shared folder test has nothing to do with my home internet speed, which is NOT broadband. I won't be getting broadband here until November.

Now I have to figure out how to undo the shared folder thing and make my laptop not discoverable and all that good stuff.

 

7 Mbps or MB/s, those are not the same, 7MB/s is actually 56Mbps. For the folder, it's somewhere under properties and advanced settings, the sharing settings for the computer being discoverable and whatnot are in the network and sharing center.

 

I just checked it again, it's in MB/s. Sorry I thought it meant the same thing. The speed dropped to 4 MB/s now for some reason. It was rising slowly, but I didn't bother to let transfer the entire file since I didn't want to wait.

 

Is it wireless to wireless or wired to wireless.

 

I guess it's wired to wireless? I'm copying a 3gb file from my desktop (LAN connection) to the shared folder that my laptop created (wifi connection).

 

Is your SSID encrypted? If yes, only with WPA2-PSK with AES (without TKIP!)?
Only that encryption will allow you to use 802.11n speeds, alternatively unencrypted (not advised!).
This should be under the security settings of the router for the wireless frequency.
Here's the manual http://downloads.trendnet.com/tew-692gr/manual/ug_tew-692gr(1.02).pdf pages 15 - 17.

 

For both my 2.4 and 5GHZ security settings, they are SSID WPA2-PSK AES (no TKIP)

 

Ok, that seems around the most important setting that could be configured wrong.
That reminds me, did you see 300Mbit/s while testing it in the status window of the wireless connection?

 

Which connection am I testing this with? My home connection?

 

Yes, 56Mbps seems a bit low for a wireless N 5GHz connection, it isn't bad, but still seems low compared to what i get at home.

 

At home on my 5ghz connection I'm fluctuating between 90-140

 

Then the speeds you are getting are completely normal, you usually get ~50% of the speed reported by windows in terms of usable throughput. I'm surprised that on 5GHz you don't get a better throughput though, whether it is the adapter or the router, i don't know. It could also be a broken or unplugged antenna.

 

Or you could be to far away of the router. But it never goes over 140mbit/s? Because if it doesn't then you seem to have a cheap engineering example which has only one antenna activated. I once had that too and needed to replace the card with a new one, this time not an engineering example.

Forgot to add, do you have 40MHz channels in the 5GHz configuration on the router active? That is also needed for more than 140Mbit/s.

 

4-7MB a sec is pretty good. Looks like you have a single stream 130-150mbit wifi connection, and are getting quite a bit of bandwidth. Looks like it's working fine. Keep on the 5Ghz band if you can, there are a few reasons it is better in most cases. Not as many people have 5Ghz so less crowding, and 2.4Ghz only has 3 separate channels, while 5Ghz band has quite a bit more, like 5-6+ or something. The only thing is it doesnt go through walls as good, so in some cases you might get a really weak signal, but your wifi nic should auto switch to another AP (possibly on 2.4Ghz) if that happens.

 

Thanks for the input everyone.

I'm pretty sure that the network card is not a sample of any kind. I've compared it to what the legitimate card that others on Amazon have purchased.

I'm not sure I have the 40 mhz channels active. I'll have to check to see how to do that.

Looks like all my antennae are plugged in and none of them look broken. It hasn't really been touched at all since I've installed it.

 

The AP's you connect to have to support wider channels too, and at a dorm they probably have that turned off so that they can better handle the high density.

 

I've been trying to see if I can do this. I've looked in the manual and checked online, but the only option in my router configuration for 5GHz configuration for 40mhz channels is "auto 20/40". There doesn't seem to be a way for me to force it to 40.

 

In that case auto. But yeah, seems like you would need to test it somewhere else. Because if even a single non 802.11n client is connected to the 5GHz band, it's going to 20MHz.

 

The only thing connected to the 5 ghz band is this laptop. Are there any "advanced settings" under my network card properties that I can adjust to increase performance?

 

No, you normaly don't have to manipulate a single setting on the client side (if you have the defaults loaded). Only the accesspoint needs to be configured correctly.