Wifi Slowness - Hardware Or Software?

[gibberish]

i cant get any higher than ~60 kilobytes/s on my connection, which usually gives 2400 kilobytes/s wired and 1100 kilobytes/s on a wireless g card. also, if i try to download anything larger than about 1 megabyte the transfer ends up corrupted.

i imagine the second issue is software related, how about the first? i read of some people getting hundreds of kilobytes/s so i'm a little worried...

edit: why was this moved to help? i don't need any help, i just asked a simple question!

 

[milkshake]

its already been mentioned in the following topics.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54340-post-your-speed-over-wifi/
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54921-you-tube-through-vlc/
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54831-minitube/
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54901-possible-wifi-issues/

and also reported here in the bug tracker.
http://bugs.openpandora.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=140

you are not alone don't worry.

 

[gibberish]

thanks, so without trawling those threads - do we have an answer from ED or Craig on which it is yet?

 

[mali]

edit: why was this moved to help? i don't need any help, i just asked a simple question!

If you didn't need help, you wouldn't have asked

Thanks much, milkshake

 

[mali]

This is very interesting and might shed some light on your problem:

Well, I have some positive information to add to this thread...at least for me. I switched routers to my old Netgear WGR614v7 and now my wget test are showing a consistent 800-900+KB/s. Occasional drops a bit lower, but never stalls or goes really low like before. Just for testing purposes I tried channel 4 and channel 11 on the Netgear and tested with WEP enabled and disabled. None of the changes made any real difference...speed stayed consistent.

So in review....

Netgear WGR614v7 = Good ~900KB/s speeds.
2wire 2701HG = Bad < 50KB/s speeds.

 

[WizardStan]

Adding things together based on some other results I've seen, it's entirely possible that the Pandora is doing (or more likely not doing) something that makes it incompatible with some routers at 802.11g speeds, and for some reason falls back on 802.11b speeds. Some routers may be more forgiving of whatever this something that the Pandora is or is not doing than others, so allows the 802.11g speed. If this consistently holds true, that narrows down the problem greatly, and almost guarantees it is software related.

 

[paulguy]

802.11b should allow a bit over 1MB/s, not the pathetic ~50KB/s we've been seeing on the problematic pandoras and even more than enough for the ~500-600 we've been seeing on good pandoras.

Would be nice to see more tests with different access points.

 

[WizardStan]

802.11b should allow a bit over 1MB/s, not the pathetic ~50KB/s we've been seeing on the problematic pandoras and even more than enough for the ~500-600 we've been seeing on good pandoras.

11Mb/s = 1.375MB/s: in theory, you are correct, 802.11b can provide a maximum bitrate of just over 1MB/s.
Then the router/wifi connection itself takes some of those bits, the protocol takes some, in the end you're left with about 400-500 KB of actual data that can be transferred under the best possible conditions. 1/10th of even that speed does seem low, but if it's correct we're at least on our way to solving the problem.
Anyone that gets more than 500KB/s is definitely connected at 802.11g standard, which can hit a maximum throughput of about 2.5MB/s. 1/3 of that throughput is definitely within the ballpark of a good wifi connection.

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

from my experience, the router/pandora being kicked back to .b for some reason seems plausible...

 

[paddy]

This is very interesting and might shed some light on your problem:

Well, I have some positive information to add to this thread...at least for me. I switched routers to my old Netgear WGR614v7 and now my wget test are showing a consistent 800-900+KB/s. Occasional drops a bit lower, but never stalls or goes really low like before. Just for testing purposes I tried channel 4 and channel 11 on the Netgear and tested with WEP enabled and disabled. None of the changes made any real difference...speed stayed consistent.

So in review....

Netgear WGR614v7 = Good ~900KB/s speeds.
2wire 2701HG = Bad < 50KB/s speeds.

I have the same router and fiber optic broadband 10mb line with only the pandora hooked to it,speed is poor and connection drops alot,no good for streaming media but lite browsing is ok.

I hope it gets sorted,and if that speed is for real then it looks like hardware to me,my connection is very clean and all my many devices get superb speed 100% of the time day or night week after week,my pandora unit much like my first unit gets 55/210kbs max with disconnections all the time,my first unit was worse than the second, i blame the shielding and drivers.

 

[mali]

I have the same router

Which from the two?

 

[fusion_power]

I hope it gets sorted,and if that speed is for real then it looks like hardware to me,my connection is very clean and all my many devices get superb speed 100% of the time day or night week after week,my pandora unit much like my first unit gets 55/210kbs max with disconnections all the time,my first unit was worse than the second, i blame the shielding and drivers.

Is there STILL no "do this and it is solved" Soulution for the WIFI stability problem? I really thought it is just a minor fix to do but since nobody knows more about the real reason why this stuff happens, I wonder if this isn't more serious than I thought first.
SOMEBODY has to know what causes this strange WIFI behavior, maybe the Guys who wrote the Drivers or the ones who wrote the Network manager? I would ask them but I don't know them.
But if nobody from our Comunity can help, maybe other Comunities have some Ideas? From other Mobile Devices that use the same Chip...I don't know.

 

[paddy]

I have the same router

Which from the two?

Netgear WGR614v7

 

[chris_c]

I don't think the problem is fallback to b mode I changed my (netgear) router from b+g to g only without difference

I also noticed that although chrome couldn't initiate a download from the file archive I was able to download it with wget starting at 100kb/s dropping to 40 during the download of a 50meg file...

I also notice with chrome some sites that it cannot open pages from, over different days can be opened albeit slowly with midori or aroura

not saying its at a higher level than the driver as problems with network drivers can manifest in some bloody odd ways!