Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 19:37 Post subject: WRT54G2: Wireless rate drops to 2 Mbps or 1 Mbps
Using a WRT54G2 flashed to v24-10709 micro, I set up a standard wireless access point network (channel set to auto, G-only, WPA2 Personal security).
When I reboot the unit, the wireless rate is 54 Mbps. Unfortunately, whenever a wireless client does a large transfer (say, an iTunes download), the wireless rate drops from 54 Mbps to 2 Mbps or 1 Mbps.
I read through the Peacock thread and followed the instructions there to do a 30/30/30 reset, then an upgrade to v24-11296 micro.
Unfortunately, even after a hard reset and upgrade to v24-11296, I hit the same problem: as soon as a wireless client does a big transfer, the wireless rate drops down from 54 Mbps to 2 Mbps:
I tried setting the ACK timing to 0, disabling WPA2, and I ran iStumbler to find an empty channel and changed the channel from Auto to that channel -- nothing helped.
Wired clients have no problem with big downloads, so this is specifically a problem with the wireless.
My wireless client is about 10-15 feet from the router, so I'm pretty sure it's not a range issue. However, I am only getting an SNR of 40 on the wireless client -- is that good enough?
If this is an issue with the wireless chipset in the WRT54G2, I can deal with that, but it'd be nice to see if other folks are running into the same problem.
Others have seen this same problem with the Tx power when set to 70. I think it overdrives the output drivers due to the crappy antennas inside.
Hmm. I think I spoke too soon.
With the Tx power set to 45 mW, the problem came back again this morning as soon as my wireless client did an iTunes podcast download; the data rate dropped down to 2 Mbps and stuck there.
I've moved the Tx power down to 35 mW to see if that helps. But I'm seriously unimpressed with this hardware, and will be replacing it shortly.
(edit)
Same problem at 35 mW. This hardware is going back.
I'm surprised -- is nobody else running into this problem?
Joined: 02 Nov 2008 Posts: 53 Location: Burnt Scrotum, New Mexico
Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 0:20 Post subject:
Very similar problem on my wrt150n 1.1, yesterday switched wifi rate from auto to 54mbps, so far so good.
But on both routers (150n and g2) there's a considerable lag, especially when streaming mms or such. This never happened on linksys fw. So I give up on dd-wrt , last night ordered WRT54G-TM (8/32) and will flush it with potato.
had same problem here with wrt54g2. did the same same steps thatwas listed here except for the transmit power. i reduced it to 28mW. did the trick. the signal strength is still ok but atleast the rate doesnt drop. plays around at 36 to54 Mbps. i'll observe the router and will post if its a success or not.
client mode = Linksys (in my sig) (this is the one that seems to drop to 1-2mbps range)
both of my routers are running DD-WRT v24 pre-sp2 11296 (and i hard-reset both of them before manual configure with the 'erase nvram' stuff)
also... it did seem like when i had the Belkin router fairly close to my linksys (in other room about 15feet away or so) it seemed like i got pretty good speeds (i.e. speedtest.net did around 4mbps) ... now it's around 1mbps (maybe 2mbps TOPS)
EDIT: even when it's back to close... the overall speed is noticeably better but it still aint perfect. _________________ Primary Router: Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 /w dd-wrt.v24_mini_generic (r46640 May 13th 2021) ; new Panasonic capacitors Feb 11th 2020 | Backup Router: Linksys WRT54GS v6 /w dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic (r46640 May 13th 2021)