laptop internet speed seems pitifully slow -- is my network card capable?

Hello. I am using Leap 42.2 on a Thinkpad E520. I have ATT UVerse Gigapower (1Gbps) service, but my laptop’s wireless download and upload speeds seem pathetically slow. Typical download is around 27 Mbps and typical upload is around 17 Mbps. I guess this is OK for a 2.4G network, but my router is also broadcasting 5G which the laptop does not seem to see when I scan for networks. As a comparison my Samsung cellphone does see the 5G network and typical download and upload speeds are around 300 Mbps.

Based on the output below from the lappy’s Kinfocenter is its network card (despite its name) incapable of seeing a 5G network and this is the reason for the slow speeds?


Vendor   Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (0x10EC)
Device   RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (0x8168)

Thanks.
bosdad

Am Sat, 18 Mar 2017 16:56:01 GMT
schrieb bosdad <bosdad@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com>:

> Code:
> --------------------
>
> Vendor Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (0x10EC)
> Device RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (0x8168)

erm

That is your wired card.

AK


Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
(R.J. Hanlon)

Geez do I feel foolish for copying the wrong information. Sorry, sorry.
Please try this instead.
Thanks for your understanding.
bosdad


Vendor      Intel Corporation (0x8086)
Decice      Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak] (0x0084)

I apologized for inadvertently copying and posting the ethernet card info for my laptop rather than the wireless card info. Still nobody has replied to my inquiry.

I would greatly appreciate some sagely advice on my inquiry as to the capabilities of my lappy’s wireless card.

Thanks. :
bosdad

What your wireless hardware is capable of, and what the actual performance may be like are two different things…
Received signal levels and interference/congestion impact on the effective bitrate, and that can take time and effort to ascertain. It might be a good idea to scan for adjacent wireless APs in the vicinity. There are good apps for mobile phones/tablets that can do this.

You can use iwconfig to get a ‘sanpshot’ of the wireless link a a a given time.

/usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0

To get a better real-time idea of the signal level, bit-rate etc you could run it like this in a terminal window

while true; do sleep 5s; clear; iwconfig; done

and perhaps run a speed test or copy a large file to/from another machine on the network while monitoring the realtime performance of the link.

Another easy way to get continuous monitoring is to use the ‘watch’ command (by default it will run iwconfig every 2s)

watch /usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0

Dean, thanks. Here is the output of your suggested command.
But please understand that my problem as originally posted is my laptop is not detecting the 5G broadcast from my ATT UVerse modem/router which is supposed to be giving me 1Gb (which I realize is unrealistic). It’s only detecting the 2.4 G broadcast. I can scan all day long and it won’t see the 5G. Thus my original question – is the laptop’s network card incapable of detecting the 5G network and, therefore, I will never get anything better than about the 30-35Mb download and 15-17 Mb upload from the 2.4G broadcast?

My other wireless devices (e.g., Samsung cellphone, Samsung Nook tablet) do see the 5G broadcast and also the 5G broadcast from a Netgear wifi extender – it’s only this laptop that does not see 5G.

So here is the output from your command. Many thanks.
bosdad



lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"ATT2HNR64A"   
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 14:ED:BB:33:62:8A    
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=14 dBm    
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-31 dBm   
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:58   Missed beacon:0

eth0      no wireless extensions.



lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"ATT2HNR64A"   
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 14:ED:BB:33:62:8A    
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=14 dBm    
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-27 dBm   
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:60   Missed beacon:0

eth0      no wireless extensions.                                                                                                                   


But please understand that my problem as originally posted is my laptop is not detecting the 5G broadcast from my ATT UVerse modem/router which is supposed to be giving me 1Gb (which I realize is unrealistic). It’s only detecting the 2.4 G broadcast. I can scan all day long and it won’t see the 5G. Thus my original question – is the laptop’s network card incapable of detecting the 5G network and, therefore, I will never get anything better than about the 30-35Mb download and 15-17 Mb upload from the 2.4G broadcast?

Yes, I understand that is the case.

Am Thu, 23 Mar 2017 17:16:01 GMT
schrieb bosdad <bosdad@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com>:

> wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:“ATT2HNR64A”

bgn = 2.4GHz only

iwlist wlan0 c

iw phy phy0 info

will most likely confirm that.

AK


Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
(R.J. Hanlon)

Sorry, but are some/all of the above suggestions to run from the command line?

Or are you simply agreeing that my lappy’s wifi card is not capable of seeing a 5GHz broadcast from the modem/router?

Would appreciate clarification.
Thanks! :wink:
bosdad

The hardware is not capable, but Aloelkh gave you a couple of commands to run to convince yourself of the capability…

iwlist wlan0 c
iw phy phy0 info

Am Thu, 23 Mar 2017 19:56:02 GMT
schrieb bosdad <bosdad@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com>:

> Sorry, but are some/all of the above suggestions to run from the command
> line?
>
> Or are you simply agreeing that my lappy’s wifi card is not capable of
> seeing a 5GHz broadcast from the modem/router?

Both.

AK


Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
(R.J. Hanlon)

Many thanks to AK and Dean for confirming that the lappy is not capable of reading the 5G signal from my modem/router. Guess it’s time for a new laptop!:shame:

bosdad

Am Thu, 23 Mar 2017 21:36:01 GMT
schrieb bosdad <bosdad@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com>:

> Guess it’s time for a new
> laptop!

Well, just had a short look what offers you get (at the usual suspects which
I won’t name) when searching for “ABGN mini PCI-Express card” and looking for
other usual suspects considering linux compatibility “by default” (which I will
name, Atheros/Qualcomm and Intel).

Not really expensive, you certainly will get something for around 30-40€ or
less, so maybe worth some consideration.

Important note:

ABGN, the “A” is the code for “works in 5GHz band”.

AK


Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
(R.J. Hanlon)

Thank you for this helpful information. :wink:
I’ve done a few quick Amazon.com searches and note that this is a common statement:
“Up to 300 Mbps data rate …”
Am I expecting way too much to think that “…up to…” 300 Mbps is terrible when I’m on a 1gig wifi network? I get better speeds than 300 Mbps on my cell phone.
Thanks again.
bosdad

On Fri 24 Mar 2017 03:36:01 AM CDT, bosdad wrote:

Akoellh;2817366 Wrote:
> Am Thu, 23 Mar 2017 21:36:01 GMT
> schrieb bosdad <bosdad@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com>:
>
> > Guess it’s time for a new
> > laptop!
>
> Well, just had a short look what offers you get (at the usual suspects
> which
> I won’t name) when searching for “ABGN mini PCI-Express card” and
> looking for
> other usual suspects considering linux compatibility “by
> default” (which I will
> name, Atheros/Qualcomm and Intel).
>
> Not really expensive, you certainly will get something for around
> 30-40€ or
> less, so maybe worth some consideration.
>
> Important note:
>
> ABGN, the “A” is the code for “works in 5GHz band”.
>
> AK
>
> –
> Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
> stupidity.
> (R.J. Hanlon)

Thank you for this helpful information. :wink:
I’ve done a few quick Amazon.com searches and note that this is a common
statement:
“Up to 300 Mbps data rate …”
Am I expecting way too much to think that “…up to…” 300 Mbps is
terrible when I’m on a 1gig wifi network? I get better speeds than 300
Mbps on my cell phone.
Thanks again.
bosdad

Hi
Have a read of this…

You also need to check to router settings to see what bandwidth
settings are…


Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.1|GNOME 3.16.2|4.1.38-50-default
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Thank you, Malcolm. Interesting article.

Could you be more specific as to the router"bandwidth" settings I should check? What am I looking for when I examine the router settings?
bosdad

Hi
This is from my router;

http://thumbnails117.imagebam.com/53997/894f3e539966545.jpg](ImageBam)

If I get the bandwidth to stick at 40MHz I get full speed on my 1x1 devices (150 and 300).

Don’t know if this will provide any useful information but my settings are as follows:

wifi channel 9 (I’ve tried many channels – most seem to have 1, 2, or 3 networks on them but always changing)
current wifi channel 9 (20MHz)
channel frequency 20 MHz (default is 20MHz but can be changed to 40 MHz)
secondary channel – lower (can be changed to upper which is noted as default, but I get red warnings about channel selection when I try that)
wifi mode 802.11n/b/g 2.4 GHz (default)
transmit power 100

bosdad

On Fri 24 Mar 2017 08:16:01 PM CDT, bosdad wrote:

malcolmlewis;2817416 Wrote:
> Hi
> This is from my router;
>
> ‘[image: http://thumbnails117.imagebam.com/53997/894f3e539966545.jpg]’
> (ImageBam)
>
> If I get the bandwidth to stick at 40MHz I get full speed on my 1x1
> devices (150 and 300).

Don’t know if this will provide any useful information but my settings
are as follows:

wifi channel 9 (I’ve tried many channels – most seem to have 1, 2, or
3 networks on them but always changing)
current wifi channel 9 (20MHz)
channel frequency 20 MHz (default is 20MHz but can be changed to 40 MHz)
secondary channel – lower (can be changed to upper which is noted as
default, but I get red warnings about channel selection when I try that)
wifi mode 802.11n/b/g 2.4 GHz (default)
transmit power 100

bosdad

Hi
So change the Channel frequency to 40MHz and see how that goes. If your
all n then look at setting to n only as well.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.1|GNOME 3.16.2|4.1.38-50-default
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