Very very slow internet on only one computer (dns issue?)

[dsec123]

Hi,

I just installed a sabrent wifi card into my desktop. I downloaded the latest drivers, it seemed to install without problems. The card picks up networks (sometimes slowly, though), and shows them as healthy connections and everything looks normal.

I can connect to my network, but the internet is so slow. It takes about 1-2 minutes to load google. I've checked the connection properties & also ipconfig /all and compared it to the settings on my laptop (which works fine), and everything looks pretty much the same.

If I use 'automatically obtain dns servers', it defaults to the same dns servers that my laptop uses, but when I diagnose the connection I get the 'Your computer appears to be correctly configured, but the device or resource (DNS server) is not responding.' If I change my DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4, it gets rid of the error and everything looks good, but it doesn't help out the internet speed at all.

I've tried flushing and releasing and renewing my dns in the command prompt, I've reset and power cycled the router about a billion times, I've re-installed the hardware & driver a few times, nothing seems to work. Mini virtual wifi server thing doesn't show up in my device properties. Here's what ipconfig /all shows:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : DS-PC
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Ralink RT61 Turbo Wireless LAN Card
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-13-14-00-0E-B9
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::2dc8:a31d:242f:590f%14(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.13(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : March-09-13 10:22:18 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : March-09-13 11:36:11 AM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 369103636
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-17-CF-35-B1-BC-AE-C5-A8-C9-C5

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 64.71.255.204
64.71.255.198
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.{F03E65B1-767A-4677-B766-9FB43A3120FE}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:9d38:953c:1449:1f0a:3f57:fff2(Pref
erred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::1449:1f0a:3f57:fff2%13(Preferred)
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

the DNS servers are what I get if I automatically obtain them. As I mentioned, this works flawlessly on my laptop.

can anyone help me out with this?

 

[chev65]

With the Microsoft Virtual WiFi miniport adaptor not showing up it means that the drivers for the sabrent wifi card are not Windows 7 approved drivers which is most likely the problem.

Have you tried going to Windows update to see if they have new drivers for the sabrent wifi card?

You should try to update the drivers if possible.

 

[dsec123]

hi chev,

thanks for the reply.. i'm pretty sure i have the latest drivers for this thing.. they installed with no problems, and the stupid card definitely says it's windows 7 compatible.. i'll see what else i can get.

the other issue i've noticed is that at my location, you should be able to find 20+ wifi access points at any given time.. my card usually recognizes like 4 or 5, and then will drop a bunch, and then load a bunch of other ones, and then finally find my own access point, and then drop it, etc etc. does that also sound like a driver issue?

 

[chev65]

hi chev,

thanks for the reply.. i'm pretty sure i have the latest drivers for this thing.. they installed with no problems, and the stupid card definitely says it's windows 7 compatible.. i'll see what else i can get.

the other issue i've noticed is that at my location, you should be able to find 20+ wifi access points at any given time.. my card usually recognizes like 4 or 5, and then will drop a bunch, and then load a bunch of other ones, and then finally find my own access point, and then drop it, etc etc. does that also sound like a driver issue?

If the errors go away when using Google's DNS then you should use Google's DNS.

With that many A/P's in your area channel selection can be very important, channel selection can have a large impact on wireless speed. There are also some router settings that can have a huge influence on wireless speed. We can make some adjustments there once I see which channels are in use.

The Xirrus WiFi inspector is good for helping to decide which channel to use. Please install Xirrus and post a screen shot of what it says.

Wi-Fi Inspector | Xirrus

 

[dsec123]

quick update, i enabled the virtual wifi miniport adapter by using the following command:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=access point name key=password keyUsage=persistent

and now it shows up in device manager. basically i have the following adapters showing:

microsoft 6to4 adapter
microsoft ISATAP adapter
microsoft ISATAP adapter # 2
microsoft virtual miniport adapter
ralink rt61 turbo wireless LAN card (the card in question)
teredo tunneling pseudo-interface
WAN miniport (IKEv2)
WAN miniport (IP)
WAN miniport (IPv6)
WAN miniport (L2TP)
WAN miniport (Network Monitor)
WAN miniport (PPPOE)
WAN miniport (PPTP)
WAN miniport (SSTP)

if that helps anyone figure out what's going on.

 

[dsec123]

grabbing xirrus right now, will post in a few minutes..

 

[dsec123]

alright, so here's the screen xirrus is currently showing. note that '3rd degree' and 'sandzland' are not my access point, and even though xirrus is only showing those two at the moment (still only showing those two), my little wireless internet icon in the bottom right of my screen shows about 6 A/Ps. i'm also currently connected to my own access point, with exceptionally slow internet.. still takes about 2 full minutes to load google.com

changing my DNS to google's does remove the diagnosis error that my DNS server isn't responding, but it doesn't affect the speed of the connection whatsoever.

 

[dsec123]

here's finally a xirrus screen while connected to my router:

let me know if this makes any sense to anybody. the connection was dropped shortly thereafter. everything's still way too slow.

 

[dsec123]

is it possible that there's some issue with the fact that my network apparently is 802.11n but my card is apparently 802.11g? (Sabrent USA)

 

[dsec123]

anyone?

 

[dsec123]

running these commands i believe has helped the situation a bit:

Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog
Reset IPv4 TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ipv4 reset reset.log
Reset IPv6 TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ipv6 reset reset.log

i can now load speedtest.net and am getting about 0.22mbps download speed, which is a vast improvement over the last few days. however on my laptop my wireless speed is about 40mbps, so there's still obviously something very very wrong here.

 

[chev65]

At the very least you need to change the wireless channel 6 you are on now because all of your neighbors are using the same channel.

Channel 11 would probably be best there but it may take some experimentation to find the best one.

If your NIC card can only handle 802.11G then make sure your router is operating in the mixed network mode 802.11G+N etc.

I'm confused as to why 802.11n is showing up if your NIC card can only handle 802.11g, you might want to look into that.

 

[dsec123]

ok, so changing channels does nothing.. although then again, if channel 6 was a problem, i imagine my laptop (and iphone) would be slow as well as my desktop.

not sure about the 801.11n thing - i did some googling and it would appear that an 801.11n router is backwards compatible with an 801.11g card, so i don't think that's an issue.

i'm still stuck. any other advice? i'm going to try one of those usb wireless things next since i can't get this thing sorted out. i think it's beyond all hope of being solved.

 

[chev65]

ok, so changing channels does nothing.. although then again, if channel 6 was a problem, i imagine my laptop (and iphone) would be slow as well as my desktop.

not sure about the 801.11n thing - i did some googling and it would appear that an 801.11n router is backwards compatible with an 801.11g card, so i don't think that's an issue.

i'm still stuck. any other advice? i'm going to try one of those usb wireless things next since i can't get this thing sorted out. i think it's beyond all hope of being solved.

Well changing the channel wasn't really meant to fix anything, it's just a way of eliminating possible problems further down the line because channel 6 was heavily overloaded in your area.

Yes, of course the router is backwards compatible, that wasn't the issue, you still need to be using the correct router settings in order to use mixed settings, there are wireless N only settings and also mixed settings for this.

Xirrus shows that this connection is using 802.11n and it shouldn't say that unless your wireless NIC can use 802.11n so I'm not sure how that is possible. Updating the driver for this NIC might be worthwhile.

 

[dsec123]

hi chev, thanks again for your feedback, i appreciate it.

i changed my router to 'g' only just to test things, and xirrus now shows my connection as 801.11g. it hasn't really affected anything whatsoever, unfortunately, aside from slowing down the rest of my devices that could use 801.11n. in fact, i think it's actually made things slower somehow.

for drivers i originally used the driver that came with the product. that did not work. then i scanned the sabrent website for updated drivers and downloaded their PCI-G802 driver, which shows up as 'RT6x Wireless LAN Card'. No improvement. Googling the card eventually led me to a website where some guy claimed that you had to go to Ralink's website to get the proper driver, which is where I got their IS_STA_RT2860 driver, which also didn't work. To the best of my knowledge, these are pretty much the only drivers available for this card. None of them work, all of them seem relatively recent.. not sure what to do.

an unsecured network has come into range lately, and i my connection to that network is just as slow as the others. i think this problem is completely unsolvable, unfortunately.

 

[chev65]

Yes using G only will slow things down for your other connections, use the mixed setting instead.

This NIC card is way out of date but I'm sure you knew that. In fact wireless G is an outdated connection method that is up to 6 times slower than wireless N.

If you went with a wireless N NIC and all of your other devices can use wireless N then you can change the setting in your router to use wireless N only which would be a huge speed improvement over the mixed setting. You are limited to only 54Mbps with the mixed settings, you can obtain 300Mbps or more using the wireless N only setting.

You should go with a newer USB type NIC for this like the DWA-140, which you can pick up for next to nothing at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DWA-14...qid=1363114541&sr=8-1&keywords=d-link+dwa-140

 

[importfanatik]

Had the same issue on a Lenovo thinkpad, win64.
It drove me insane for over 6 months. Today I think I have fixed it.

I isolated the slowness to a long delay in DNS resolution.
pings to IP addresses came back while pings to DNS addresses would hang, meanwhile IE and firefox would hang.
Suddenly the DNS ping would come back and the browsers would start to load.


After 4 hours of troubleshooting I isolated it to the following network adapter: "WAN miniport (IKEv2) "
You need to go view -> show hidden devices to see it.
Disable that sucker, and then continue living your life to the fullest again =o)

 

[groze]

Had the same issue on a Lenovo thinkpad, win64.
It drove me insane for over 6 months. Today I think I have fixed it.

I isolated the slowness to a long delay in DNS resolution.
pings to IP addresses came back while pings to DNS addresses would hang, meanwhile IE and firefox would hang.
Suddenly the DNS ping would come back and the browsers would start to load.


After 4 hours of troubleshooting I isolated it to the following network adapter: "WAN miniport (IKEv2) "
You need to go view -> show hidden devices to see it.
Disable that sucker, and then continue living your life to the fullest again =o)

No advice here just a comment. Here is what I have read online. I looked up WAN miniport (IKEv2) none of them agree about what it is or if it's necessary. One info I read it maybe needed for dial-up or vpn or even for wireless connection.

 

[alinox]

wired internet speed is much slower ten wifi

i have Lenovo thinkpad e531 x64 win 8

I just got new speed internet and when I connect my computer using ethernet it's signifiantly slower than wireless on the same laptop.

On my other laptop the wired produces very fast results (faster than wifi) so the problem is my laptopr's ethernet connection.

what can i do?

My ISP provider came with his working laptop, pluging in my ethernet cable in his laptop and the internet speed it was 300mb/s.
and on my laptop is 17 mb/s....