Same networking hardware, worse connection

[Polarhound]

Last week my old HP died. Replaced it with an Asus box from Worst Buy since it had a PCI slot and could keep my old ZyXEL network card. While network card and router (DI-524) are the same as before, with antennas and computer in identical positions, latency has gone through the roof.

For years I had the router set to channel 11. Pings in WoW averaged around 80-110ms playing on a server two time zones away. First night with new router, had to change to 6 to get decent ping. Second night, channel 1. At the moment I'm on channel 3 and still iffy connection.

Distance between router and NIC external antenna is only about 5-6 feet, with nothing but a wooden wall, wooden floor and some carpet in between them.

I've tried the external antenna in multiple locations to no avail. It's hard to believe that interference from the new computer could be that much of an issue given the close distances between antennas. I have ruled out RFI from an el-cheapo PS in the Asus box by replacing it with a 650w Antec as well.

Any ideas?

Edit: Trying one more new thing now: Antenna is now hanging off the top of my secondary monitor (Viewsonic 1912) which sits on top of the tower. The antenna is now about a foot closer to the router. Running a fresh batch of ping tests to google.com right now. Last time around I got 20-22ms rounds for a while, only to have it shoot up to 400+ after a bit, so will have to do a bunch to see.

 

[Dangman]

OS issue maybe? Was the HP using the same OS as the Asus?

 

[Polarhound]

HP was running XP SP3. Asus is Win7 Premium 64bit.

 

[Dangman]

HP was running XP SP3. Asus is Win7 Premium 64bit.

If it's not a fresh reinstall, I recommend doing a fresh reinstall of Windows 7 Premium just in case Asus bundled some sort of crap ware that's causing the higher latency.

 

[E4g1e]

There is part of the problem. A lot of older hardware is either totally incompatible with Windows 7 or Windows Vista or is so old that the vendor either went out of business or has not bothered to write new drivers for newer OSes for such hardware. I recently encountered the very same problem with an internal PCI Linksys Wireless G card: Linksys does not officially support Windows 7 or any 64-bit OS for that card. Although I installed the Ralink driver to circumvent the lack of driver support, Windows Update insisted on replacing it with a Linksys-branded driver (which I have known that it is only compatible with 32-bit operating systems). Not surprisingly, after that update the wireless card refused to connect to the rest of the network, let alone the Internet.

 

[Polarhound]

If it's not a fresh reinstall, I recommend doing a fresh reinstall of Windows 7 Premium just in case Asus bundled some sort of crap ware that's causing the higher latency.

The only crapware on the box was the standard Worst Buy crud that took 5 minutes to remove.

The only reinstall I could do regardless would be a return to factory state which would have the same crud still preinstalled.

 

[Polarhound]

There is part of the problem. A lot of older hardware is either totally incompatible with Windows 7 or Windows Vista or is so old that the vendor either went out of business or has not bothered to write new drivers for newer OSes for such hardware. I recently encountered the very same problem with an internal PCI Linksys Wireless G card: Linksys does not officially support Windows 7 or any 64-bit OS for that card. Although I installed the Ralink driver to circumvent the lack of driver support, Windows Update insisted on replacing it with a Linksys-branded driver (which I have known that it is only compatible with 32-bit operating systems). Not surprisingly, after that update the wireless card refused to connect to the rest of the network, let alone the Internet.

As part of the initial updates after firing up the system, my wireless card had a digitally signed driver update automatically installed with a date of 8/23/09. I would hope with it being less than a year old, plus having to be 64-bit ready to even be available, that it would not be a huge issue.

 

[E4g1e]

The only crapware on the box was the standard Worst Buy crud that took 5 minutes to remove.

That's just one of the pieces of crapware around. Other crapware installed on these pre-built systems include trial versions of office productivity programs and antivirus programs which can cost you a lot of money to purchase once the trial period expires. (I call vendor-installed trialware "crapware" because once the 30 days are up, you cannot use that software again until you pony up the vendor's full MSRP to register the program; hence it will do nothing but eat up a lot of HDD space.)

 

[Polarhound]

It should also be mentioned that while I had the cash available to not rack up anything in the way of credit card bills to get back up and running, attempting to move up to 802.11n is not a financial option at the moment.

 

[E4g1e]

It should also be mentioned that while I had the cash available to not rack up anything in the way of credit card bills to get back up and running, attempting to move up to 802.11n is not a financial option at the moment.

Your router might also need a firmware update in order to accommodate newer systems.

 

[Dangman]

Hmm, if you can, try that wireless card in another PC that's running Windows XP. See if the same issues occur.

 

[Polarhound]

Your router might also need a firmware update in order to accommodate newer systems.

I'm not seeing how a router update would affect anything considering that the NIC it is communicating with has not changed. The NIC from the old system was moved to the new one, and the external antenna on the NIC is in the exact same location.

 

[Polarhound]

Hmm, if you can, try that wireless card in another PC that's running Windows XP. See if the same issues occur.

The only other systems running XP are locating in a different part of the house, and can not be relocated as they run my home video security and X-10 automation systems.

 

[E4g1e]

I'm not seeing how a router update would affect anything considering that the NIC it is communicating with has not changed. The NIC from the old system was moved to the new one.

Sometimes, old firmware is not compatible with newer software. I noticed a deterioration in performance of my 2Wire DSL wireless gateway when I upgraded from XP to Vista. In this case, it was the system that was wired to the router via Ethernet that got upgraded. And somehow the wireless gateway's firmware isn't fully compatible with newer OSes than XP.

 

[Polarhound]

Sometimes, old firmware is not compatible with newer software. I noticed a deterioration in performance of my 2Wire DSL wireless gateway when I upgraded from XP to Vista. In this case, it was the system that was wired to the router via Ethernet that got upgraded. And somehow the wireless gateway's firmware isn't fully compatible with newer OSes than XP.

In this case though, there is only a hardware (NIC) to hardware (router) communication happening. The computer end (which has no direct connection to the router other than through the NIC) still has to abide by the basic networking and layered communication protocols. The actual communication stream between the two wireless devices has not changed, and changing the hardware that feeds one of the devices can not possibly affect it in the manner you are describing; all data is reformatted by the NIC to the same format as it was on the previous computer before being transmitted.

There is no possible way that the computer-NIC data exchange can affect the signal strength (currently down 40%) between the NIC and router. The OS has no control over that. The hardware-to-hardware networking part has not changed location, firmware or antenna location.

 

[Polarhound]

Well, even though I couldn't really afford it, pulled out the plastic and moved to N. Drove out to the Worst Buy that always has a better selection and picked up a Netgear WNDR3300 Dual-band N router and a WNDA3100 USB dongle adapter. Total price for both: about $165.

Even with the dongle put as close as possible to the router, (read: stickied to the wall at max cable length), still can't get a full 5 bars of signal, although things do seem to be much improved. Currently showing 162Mbps connection and pingtest isn't showing any of the issues it did before.

This is actually the first time since the days of 1.5Mbps Roadrunner I am using anything other than a D-Link router.. Thankfully, I didn't have any of the issues I did with multiple brands when I went from B to G several years ago.

I'm still puzzled why a setup that worked for years all of a sudden went south like it did. Before switching over, I also tried new router/old nic and old router/new nic and got the same signal levels. The end solution just seems to be a matter of 'moar cowbell!'

 

[Polarhound]

That's just one of the pieces of crapware around. Other crapware installed on these pre-built systems include trial versions of office productivity programs and antivirus programs which can cost you a lot of money to purchase once the trial period expires. (I call vendor-installed trialware "crapware" because once the 30 days are up, you cannot use that software again until you pony up the vendor's full MSRP to register the program; hence it will do nothing but eat up a lot of HDD space.)

It did have the Office trial, which has since been replaced with Openoffice. The McCrapee AV has been replaced by Avast. This Asus box actually had a lot less crud on it than I remember vendors including in the past.