Wireless G Internet Hesitation

I'm getting alot of hesitation with certain sites, this one in particular is extremely speedy but others aren't so lucky. Some sites will load the banners and layout, like what is in the browser cache, and the rest takes awhile to load, in some cases 20 to 30 seconds and sometimes more.

This is my connection set up and the data I'm getting from the laptop:
I'm connected to the internet through a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) with speeds around 248.92 KBits/sec download (31.11 KBytes/sec) and 221.44 KBits/sec upload (27.68 KBytes/sec) with DNS speed over the last 3 days averaging 1330 mSec. These figures are with Line Meter installed and monitoring the connection http://www.tcpiq.com/ .

From my WISP modem it is connected to a WRT54G Linksys router with my desktop hardwired to the router. The desktop has no hesitation on any site and seems to be functioning quite normally. My laptop, however, is connected to the internet with its wireless card via the router. My laptop is where the problem lies and the hesitation is at.

I have tried various tweaks but currently have most of the settings to default, except MTU which is 1500. MSS=1460, RWIN=17520 (I have tried several settings here, one was like 256,960 once). MTU discovery is on.

I thought about interference but it consistently has a 54Mbps speed (in the system tray) and it says excellent signal strength. NetMeter shows the connection at about 3Mbps though. Which I would be happy with that if there was no hesitation. I have changed channels on the router and had no success and turned everything off around here that could interfere. The router is in the next room where my laptop is, about 25 feet at the most.

I thought about it being a browser issue. I tried IE6, Firefox and now IE7 with all 3 having the same effects.

Currently I have all the security disabled to eliminate that possibility, where I live I don't need it anyway. No houses for about a half mile.

Tried shutting everything down and bringing everything up starting with the modem, then router, then desktop and then the laptop. Didn't work either.

The problem started after I returned from vacation. I connected to a few WiFi hotspots here and there and when I returned home is when I really started noticing the problem.

The laptop has a AMD X2 dual core 4800+ processor, NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX graphics card with the built in wireless card. Wireless home network, which is strange there as well because I can access any files on the desktop very quickly. The problem seems to be isolated to the internet on certain sites.

Any help or ideas appreciated,
Thanks

 

Hey,

I'm thinking your problem is dropped packets or packet loss. You said that your using the built in wireless card now i'm not sure on the quality of the card, but i'm thinking if you used a better/ higher quality wireless card you wouldn't have this problem.

Now i say this because you state that your desktop's connection is perfectly fine. One way you could validate my theory would be by trying to use your notebook on someone else's connection. If you get the same results then it's time for a new wireless card.

Proxim wireless makes some good cards.
http://www.proxim.com/

Also if you have a cheap card laying around you could try making a cantenna which will give you a great increase in connection reliabilty. You might also be able to build one right into the onboard card but again i'm not sure on what you are currently using. Here's a nice tutorial making one:
http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html

 

I'm going to go to a WiFi hotspot today and hook up to their service and test the speeds and see if its hesitating. That way I can see if its the card or the wireless connection from the router. Not much I can do with the router though. It does work very well on several sites, but some are worst than dial up.
The laptop is extremely fast on any dial up connection though, about twice as fast as the desktop is on any site. So it might come down to having a bad wireless card, still hoping for a tweak though. The card, as per the device manager, is a 802.11 g MiniPCI Wireless Network Adapter, a very generic one at that.
I've tested pings manually and it has always come back with no packet lose. But that's not very reliable. The Line Meter I have installed does tests on the connection every couple hours and the results of the latency says its 429 mSec since I installed it on Monday. The online tests I do always come back with latency under 100 mSec. So you maybe onto something there. I have a Wireless G USB adapter, Linksys WUSB54G, I used in the early days of my home network when I was experimenting with peer to peer wireless networking before going with the router. Its being used by one of my organizations currently but I think I can get it back for awhile.

 

A little update here. I hardwired my laptop to the router, the same connection my desktop uses, and shut down the wireless just to make sure it wasn't interfering. Well, I got the same hesitation with the exact same sites. So it has to be something to do with a setting on the laptop. I've went through everything I could think of. Like I said before, the same thing with 3 different browsers: IE6, Firefox and now with IE7.

The laptop is a WinXP Pro and desktop a Win XP Home. I wonder if one of the services are causing it.

 

I'll check that out, hadn't thought of that one.

Downloaded Release Candidate 1 of IE7, didn't help. I downloaded Opera and it fixed the problem, well as far as hesitation goes in any browser. I can have all 3 browsers open and on sites it hesitates and start with IE and click on a link, then FF and then Opera last and Opera has the page open and ready while the other two are still spinning their wheels.

I have been looking into parsing. I remember getting an error when installing OneCare on it, the parser was not up to date. In was a fresh install of XP at that time, last March or so. I know, it should have showed up by now, but maybe not, there's several parsers available and they recently updated the database. With RSS feeds currently on the IE platform I get the MSXML3 parser error. I have to find that e-mail from MS support to see if they match. My work around at that time was to install MS Visual Studio because it was taking so long communicating with support and I had a time issue. But it did work and I could install the program then. Never thought about other things popping up later though. Haven't explored FF to see if it utilizes certain XML validaters yet. But obviously Opera might use a different variation.

Also along them lines, on the Windows update of July 25th, I really started noticing the problem but it has gotten worse recently. I'm also thinking that update might have had a conflict here somewhere.