How to improve wireless network speed?

10.04 wireless

5,875

Solution 1

You didn't mention what kernel driver you're using for the card, but often tunables can be found in /sys/module/[driver]/. For example, my iwlagn driver shows this:

bryce@lynmouth:/sys/module/iwlagn$ ls

drivers/ holders/ initstate notes/ parameters/ refcnt sections/ srcversion version bryce@lynmouth:/sys/module/iwlagn$ ls parameters/ 11n_disable amsdu_size_8K antenna fw_restart4965 queues_num swcrypto 11n_disable50 amsdu_size_8K50 disable_hw_scan fw_restart50 queues_num50 swcrypto50

To find out some more info about what the parameters mean, look at the output of modinfo <driver>.

To change values of a parameter, just do "echo [number] > /sys/module/[driver]/parameters/[parameter]". Some parameters are read-only, so do a "cat .../[parameter]" to check that your new value was set.

Solution 2

This isn't ideal but can you try a different wifi card? Wifi can be really hit and miss. At least this way you can determine if a different card makes any noticeable bandwidth differences.

5,875

Toby

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Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

Toby over 1 year
I am running 10.04 LTS on a desktop PC with a Belkin G-Plus MIMO Wireless network card.

Ever since running Ubuntu on the machine I have noticed fairly slow network speeds (about half the speed I get when running the same card through Windows) I did some research I found out that by and large wireless network cards aren't that well supported on most Linux distros.

I was wondering though if there is anything I could be tweaking on the system that could help squeeze a little more out of the card?

Here is some more information
*-network:1
```
   description: Wireless interface
   physical id: 2
   logical name: wlan0
   serial: 00:1c:df:24:5e:54
   capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
   configuration: broadcast=yes ip=192.168.1.5 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
```
- Toby over 13 years
  
  Cheers for the edit, looks a lot more question like now!
- maco over 13 years
  
  Is your router set for G-only or B/G Mixed? You'll get better performance with G-only.
- Toby over 13 years
  
  Good question and I will check, although would that explain why under Windows the speed is much better?
- LassePoulsen over 13 years
  
  Is that the full device info? what does sudo lshw in a terminal say about you wifi-card? It seems like it's a Ralink card (The manufacturer of the chip isn't necessary the same as the brand that is on the box!) but i can't find any specific information about it.
- myusuf3 over 13 years
  
  @Toby my experience belkin card and routers suck. so more information might be helpful.
- Toby over 13 years
  
  @Source Lab - I have edited my question with the results from the command you asked me to run. (may be of use to you too @garbagecollector)
- Toby over 13 years
  
  Various online speed tests but to be honest it is even just casual observation. I use Ubuntu in other environments and know it can work way better than this setup is.
- LassePoulsen over 13 years
  
  What is the speed that you are getting? and how about if you just use firefox for a simple download? (you can install and use nload, nload -u H -U H wlan0 to measure speed. Speedtest are often flash, and flash for linux is quite sluggish.