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Asking for help with pinpointing the issue(s)

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mkey

New Around Here
Hello gents.

My problem in short:
I have a rather laggy broadband connection which at times can work out fairly well but more often than not it bogs down, not always leading to disconnects but it just lags like mad.

My equipment:
  • ZXV10 W300B router - absolute piece of trash. Supposedly there are more than one models of these routers, one without and one with WDS. My router does not have any WDS options in the web interface. I tried viewing HTML of the options page, but haven't found any hidden options.
  • This router has been provided to me by my "broadband" provider and I'm not certain who's the owner of this device, I'm paying some sort of lease for it.
  • Installed firmware version - W300BV1.1.2c_ZRD_CT1_IPV6
  • Delock WLAN_N 300 MBps (chipset RTL8191S) WLAN adapter. I'm using the default windows application to manage the adapter from my desktop.
  • Windows 7 64bit on an aging PC with some possible USB issues, maybe power related but I don't know really.
My connection is rated at 4MBps down and 512 kbps up, which most of the time is honored.
151002193136-110809.png


The issue in more detail:
  • I typically have about 60-80% signal strength, but at times it drops below that and that's typically followed by introduction of lag, which spikes for some time, sometimes a few minutes at other times longer than that. At times I have to restart the router while at other times it looks as if I need to eject the adapter and plug it back in to "fix" the problem. Which may mean there's an adapter issue or maybe simply the connection between the adapter and the router needs to be reestablished.
  • There's a possible issue with the phone line in the building, i.e. phone cable quality. I have replaced my wall socket and made sure everything checks out there. There's a short phone cable coming from the socket going into the splitter and another short cable goring from it to the router.
  • Funny thing is that I have a stronger signal coming from my neighbor down below, which is typically at about 80-100% so I obviously thought of possible interference. Acrylic Wi-Fi show's me that he's using 802.11 b/g on channel 1 with PSK-TKIP. I set mine to 802.11n, 20MHz bandwidth on channel 13. Acrylic shows this.
WU5YvjN.png

  • My connection is the first one on the list, I don't understand why is my router not working on 5GHz since I explicitly set it to n mode. Either case, there's no channel overlapping, my neighbor is always on channel 1.
  • Typically, when lag occurs if I try connecting with my phone to the router, it works more or less OK. However, if I stay at it for a while the connection may get laggy and some applications/games may show that they're losing connection to the server.
Some other things I have tried doing:
  • Called my broadband provider. They aren't very helpful, they're basically insisting that I should check all of the equipment on my end before they make any checks on their own end. Sad matter of the fact is that a) I have doubts about my own hardware and b) the issue is sporadic and intermittent in nature, however it seems to be more expressed in the evening hours, usually when I'm online of course. Therefore probability for the "guy" to come and check the equipment at the exact moment the issue is going on is about 0.
  • Connected to my phone in hotspot mode using the mobile data network. Did this in the middle of a lag fit and everything worked OK for a while.
  • I wanted to use my older router Siemens SX763 as a WI-FI adapter, via means of WDS. However my ZTE doesn't have WDS apparently and I can't get the two to play nice so wasn't able to get the thing working. I did manage to do this previously, using this same Siemens model, but there was some other router model on the other end at the time.
Sorry for the long post, but I have been at this for a while now. I wouldn't mind purchasing some new equipment (even though locally there aren't that many options) however I'd like to be fairly certain about what exactly should I purchase. Another problem is that my broadband provider fine print states that as long as you use your own router they won't be held accountable for any issues on their own end.

I have been contemplating going back to a wired connection, however I got used to not having extra wires around the apartment. Terrible apartment layout makes this issue only worse.

I've been pinging some servers around, but at this point in time it looks like everything is working OK, I'll try doing it again later.
 

Attachments

  • ping_log.txt
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The best non overlapping 2.4GHz wireless channels are 1,6, and 11. Since your neighbor uses 1 you should use 6 or 11 which ever works best. I assume you are located in the USA.

Most vendor supplied wireless units will not work as well as a main stream purchased unit but I have no experience with your unit.

A wired connection is always better than a wireless connection.
 
I'm in Croatia. As you can see, there's already someone on 6, even though with a weaker signal so 11 would be the most fitting choice.

And yes, wired would be obviously best bet, as long as one doesn't mind digging into the walls/floor.
 
Ch 11 would be better - 12 and 13 are ok in Europe, but many chipsets will be a bit lower power there.

Set AP to B/G/N mixed mode, this is actually better for many over "N-Only" due to protection mechanisms that can really impact N performance.

You won't see 5GHz with your current router and WiFi USB adapter, as they are 2.4GHz only - one thing, if you're not doing this already, is use a USB extension cable to move the adapter away from the Desktop - the PC itself can generate noise that will affect WiFi performance.

The Siemens SX763 is supported by OpenWRT, but it's b/g only, and this would be a step backwards, IMHO...

WDS is not recommended, as this will impact all clients, and halve the bandwidth available.
 
I'll switch to 11, even though I have been using that channel for past few months with same results.

I'll also switch to b/g/n mixed mode, but all of this is more or less the same deal; with 4MBps connection, regarding bandwidth there's really not much difference between 54MBps and 300MBps connection, be it halved or not. I practically don't have a local network.

There was an USB extension cable in the mix, however while using it I didn't experience much difference in performance. While trying to eliminate other possible issues (lack of power over USB, USB extension cable fault) I opted to plug the adapter into one of the posterior USB ports. I'll retry using the cable.

I wanted to try using WDS only to eliminate the adapter as the possible issue.

I did consider trying SX763 out as my router, however due to infrastructural limitations of my apartment (basically no power socket on the wall on which the phone socket is mounted) I held out on that prospect for the time being.

While I do appreciate the bandwidth aspect of the matter, what I'm mostly interested in is to eliminate or at least encircle the cause of these sporadic bottlenecks.
 

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