Slow wireless

[Keith Clark]

On Fri, 2011-10-07 at 23:04 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Keith Clark writes:
> 
> > I'm running Fedora 15 on a laptop with a Broadcom 4318 wireless card.
> > The Network Settings shows I'm connected at 54 Mbps, but my actual
> > download speeds tested with speedtest.net show only about 0.15 Mbps
> > download and 0.24 Mbps upload.  My service is 2 Mbps download and 0.5
> > Mbps upload.
> >
> > I'm using the B43 driver.
> >
> > Any ideas on how to correct this?
> 
> The first thing to do is to figure out exactly what that needs correcting.
> 
> speedtest.net does not measure the speed between your laptop and your  
> router, they measure the speed between you, and their servers. The same goes  
> for any other web-based bandwidth measuring service. None of them have a  
> magical ability to hack into your wireless router, and open a direct  
> connection from your wireless router and your laptop, in other to measure  
> how fast you can fling packets to your router, obviously. All they can do is  
> measure how fast you can download something from them.
> 
> Unless you are sitting in speedtest.net's data center, and your wireless  
> connection goes directly to their network, your speed will also be obviously  
> impacted by your Internet provider's performance, and every Internet  
> provider between your provider, and theirs.
> 
> So, in order to confirm that you have a wireless performance problem, you  
> will need to perform exactly the same test, but this time with a wired  
> connection to your router. If your bandwidth is now close to your expected  
> 2mbps bandwidth, then only that would demonstrate an issue with your  
> wireless setup. If you still end up getting subpar bandwidth, your wireless  
> bandwith would obviously not be your issue.
> 

Hey Sam,

Sorry I didn't mention that before.  Yes, I've tried wired and I get the
correct speeds as they should be.  2 Mbps download and 0.5 Mbps upload.

Keith