Linksys wireless is sucking. Plz help

[zerokoh]

Ok so

I've got high speed cable. It works great on my stand up via ethernet.

I've got a laptop. Other connections on the laptop work fine (ie, hotspots, or neighbors with open connections, which I just used to test, honestly.)

My own wireless connection, despite saying "excellent connection" constantly, is the worst piece of dog poop ever transmogrified into technology.

Why does it suck? I can't view sites for more than three or so pages without it crapping out. It wither will lag there or give me 'page not displayed' It's slow to load when it does work, and the packet loss is ridiculous. It always says "excellent connection." Is it lying to me out of spite or something?

I'm on channel 6, using a wep, and my advanced wireless settings are as follows:

Authentication Type: Auto (Default: Auto)
Basic Rate: Default (Default: Default)
Transmission Rate: 54Mbps (Default: Auto)
CTS Protection Mode: Disable (Default: Disable)
Frame Burst: Disable (Default: Disable)
Beacon Interval: 100 (Default: 100,Milliseconds, Range: 1 - 65535)
DTIM Interval: 1 (Default: 1, Range: 1 - 255)
Fragmentation Threshold: 2346 (Default:2346, Range: 256 - 2346)
RTS Threshold: 2347 (Default:2347, Range: 0 - 2347)
AP Isolation : Off (Default: Off)
Secure Easy Setup: Enable (Default: Enable)

In basic wireless network settings, its a Mixed network.
It's a linksys 2.47GHz or something like that.

Is there anything I can do with the settings, my cable modem, or a hammer to make this crap not suck?

When I try to play a game online, my character freezes, it says "Packet lost packet lost packet lost packet lost..." Then I wake up dead. It's pathetic.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaallllllp! Haaaaaaaalllllp! Pleeeease omg bbq!

-Koh

[mnosteele52]

What model of Linksys and what wireless card or built in wireless in your laptop?

First update your router to the latest firmware then do a factory reset on it, hold the reset button down for a total of 90 seconds , the first 30 seconds leave the power plugged in, the second 30 seconds unplug the power and the last 30 seconds plug the power back in.

Then update the drivers for your wireless card in your laptop.

Use WPA or WPA2 for your encryption, not WEP, WEP can be hacked in minutes.

Also install the WPA2 update for XP - HERE (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=662bb74d-e7c1-48d6-95ee-1459234f4483&displaylang=en).

:)

[YeOldeStonecat]

A couple of things....
*Latest firmware....holds true for most makes/models of routers. All of the Linksys wireless models..this is true.
*Change your WLANs SSID...this is expecially true with common branded WAPs such as Linksys and Nutgear....as they default their SSID to their brand names. If a neighbor of yours has the same brand..their SSID is often left at the default name also. If you have 2x neighboring WLANs of the same SSID..your clients get confused...."Which way do I go George?" Resulting in issues.
*Depending on your environment..especially if you have neighboring WLANs...but other factors also..you may have to try different channels. Ch6 is what they usually come on..but try other non-overlapping channels..1 and 11.
*If you're running XP..make sure you're using SP2. Besides the obvious reasons of security fixes and other common sense safe computing best practices...SP2 did some good updates the functionality of the built in wireless config utility. I prefer using that over 3rd party utilities.
*Use WPA or WPA2. With old WEP..not only is it more cumbersome to setup, and it's easily cracked...it has more overhead..and causes a much greater performance hit.
*Change your default admin password on the router.
*Make sure MTU on the router is set correctly. 1492 for PPPoE DSL, 1500 for bridged DSL, cable, frame, etc. Manually set it...I don't trust the "auto-MTU" regardless of what make/model router it is...too many variables in between for that to work correctly.

[wiredless]

Transmission Rate: 54Mbps (Default: Auto)

Your forcing a hi-speed transmission that isn't sustainable, that's why you're losing packets, go with Auto or test with a slower rate.