Wi-Fi SLOOOOOOOW!!!???

You would have been told correctly. Any geek can crack a WEP network within an hour. With automated tools and a secondary WLAN card (as I have) you can get it down to less than 5 minutes before you can login to their network. Most people use weak passwords or dictionary passwords so it is like stealing candy from a baby.

That is actually a very good site and test routine.

It's a bagillion times stronger.

Where does Comcast do this? Comcast specifically states in all TOS I have seen that they are only responsible from the ISP building to your modem. After it leaves your modem's switch, it is your responsibility. Actually when you have a network setup, if you call Comcast out to help, the very first thing they do is disconnect your whole network, then test the modem solo. They wont put it back together.

If you can open up a screen on the iphone that shows the SNR and Signal in (dBm) of networks it is seeing, or at least on a laptop (I guess you would have a mac book), then I would walk around. Use it and walk a foot or two or so at most between refreshes. For instance, my E3000 updates these stats at 1Hz. So I walked around going about a couple feet then checking SNR, walk some more, check SNR, and so on. This will let you know what sort of wifi pattern you are getting. If you can change the ACK settings, then set it to about 1.5 times the radius of the largest point between the router and where you want service. So if it is in some corner of your house, and it is X meters from the router to the sidewalk, then put in X * 1.5 as the ACK settings (integer rounding obviously). Note that this number is in meters.

Comcast gives you a global IP address. This is the unique identifier that your modem and only your modem has. No other device in the whole world has this same number. This is how the world talks to you and knows where to route data.

Your router takes this IP address and uses it to talk to the outside world. However it also assigns another IP address (local) to your computers. Usually 192.168.1.xxx because it is standard. It could be anything you want though. So when your iphone request data packet A from google.com, it tells your router that it at 192.168.1.Z wants packet A. The router then tells the modem it wants packet A. At the same time, your imac (at 192.168.1.Y) says it wants packet B from bbc.co.uk. So the router says to the modem you want packet B too. So the interwebs gives your global ip address (maybe 12.34.567.890) packets A and B and that's it. Your router then sends packet A to 192.168.1.Z and packet B to 192.168.1.Y automatically. Hence the router part.

Now these IP numbers are usually given by a DHCP server. So when something new connects to your router, it says "hey I am new, give me a unique local IP address". The router checks a few parameters (like if it is allowed to give out IPs, if it has given out its maximum number of allowed simultaneous IPs, and so on) and then sends back 192.168.1.X as the IP for the new device. Now since these are from a Dynamic (the D in DHCP) server, there is no guarentee that it will always be 192.168.1.X. If you turn every device on the network off, then turn them all on again your iphone may now be X. However if you set them up statically, then it will always be what you set them to be. Then instead of asking the router for an address, the device just says "my address is BLAH, so give me my stuff". If there are two devices setup with their addresses as BLAH, then the router doesnt know where to send it, and you get an IP address conflict and neither device works.

DNS is not really something you need to care about. It is a dynamic name server, and maps IP addresses (usually global) to human readable strings. So the best website in the world is Google

You may know it as "google.com" though. When you type in google.com, there is a lookup done on a name server that translates it to "74.125.224.51" and gets the info there which just happens to be google.

So unless you are running a server, disregard the DNS. And unless you want statically assigned IPs, stick with DHCP.

Stick with WPA2

Change your channels to something non-automatic. Like I said before 6 is crowded because most people just plug it in and never change it. So you have a bunch of interference.

I would NOT do that. Buy a separate rotuer and a separate modem. Just buy one that is good. Buffalo and Linksys/Cisco make really good routers. Buffalo is better out of the box. Linksys/Cisco have better 3rd party support and the firmware is better after being flashed. It is pretty automatic and easy to do nowadays if you follow the instructions.

 

The 2.4Ghz is pretty good but the 5Ghz is not. Are you connecting to the 5Ghz network on your imac, or the 2.4Ghz network? Also note the review is over a year old now, it ranks much lower now though.[/QUOTE]

 

All hardware, sooner or later, "dies". The Linksys, DLink, Netgear consumer stuff will all have issues from time to time but over the past couple of decades the least amount of problems I have seen are with Linksys. However I have a router for security and keep my wireless access separate, and use a switch for wired internal access. This configuration is safer, faster, more reliable, and easiest to diagnose in case of a problem. It also has the capability of being temporarily reconfigured if a component fails.

WPA2 is fine for most household use. You will also want to turn off your SSID broadcast. As far as channel selection, try anything other than the default selection and see if things improve. I also suspect you can turn off IP6. Hard setting your IP addresses eliminates the router having to do DHCP and can make your network more stable. I have a server doing DHCP for the laptops but desktop machines all have static IPs.

 

I originally set up our wireless network when I was working with people that had "LAN parties" on a regular basis.

Naturally, as soon as my friend was out the door, I changed the router's name, and changed to the tightest security and a more complex key system :thumb:

I am fortunate that I have friends that have 1)Mac systems, PC systems, and/or 2)their own business setting up networks. Can I forward your issue to one of them?

 

Oh, and I should mention, that watching Netflix on my desktop PC (direct connection to router), occasionally mine will stop and "adjust playback"... in which case, I know it is an issue with Comcast.

 

We've been all smiles after moving up to the giga hertz stuff
woo hoo !!
:eyebrows:

I LOVE the 50+" LED TV's they're selling now, that come wi-fi enabled. I may never get anything done, ever again, if I hook that into our network. Cox cable downstreams to us at a minimum of 20mb/second. That said, I get the strangest looks when I tell folks how much I love cox.
ound:

.

 

just outside of boston, comcast came out and set up my cable modem, hd box, wireless router, phone system and laptop computers. are you looking for more than that?

 

ya, i doubt comcast would get involved with that. good luck.

 

It is difficult to say, but I doubt iPod was designed to handle tens of megabits per second of downloads in mind ...

For IPv6 select tunnel or local link mode only.
Then select Automatic for IPv6 network settings on your OS X machines, iOS 4.2 and higher devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, ...) handle IPv6 automagically, for Windows use Google

 

As images say more than words.

IPv6 settings for Airport Extreme:


IPv6 Mode: Tunnel
Block incoming IPv6 Connections: Checked
Configure IPv6: Automatically

On your Mac, go to System Preferences, Network, Advanced, TCP/IP:


Configure IPv6: Automatically (default is Off)


(If everything breaks apart, then use Link-local only for IPv6Mode on Airport Extreme and Configure IPv6 to Off on your Mac)

Not all operators/providers support IPv6 yet, but those settings above are usually good enough for things to work when they will start supporting the new internet protocol.

 

Not to start a debate, but for regular household use IPv4 might work better... I have found many odd issues over the years that removing IPv6 seems to "fix"...

 

You could have interference on your default channel.

On your laptop, do a search for available wifi signals and see if it'll tell you what channel they're on. Set your router to use one not already in use by your neighbors.

Lots of stuff uses 6 GHz. Do you have any 6 GHZ cordless phones or baby monitors? Try turning them off.

Even old 802.11b should be able to handle 10 mbps unless you're 50 feet and 10 walls distant.

If you get good speed tests right out of the modem, then it's a wifi problem and calling Comcast won't help...they're doing their job.

If the laptop on wifi gets good speed in the same location the iPod doesn't, then it's an iPod problem.

 

If Netflix determined a drop in connection speed, that would be outside of your internal network. Call Comcast and have them check if your cable modem is in full or half duplex mode. In my area, the default setting (by Comcast) is half duplex and what occurs is that when there is a lot of traffic on the Comcast wire speeds drop significantly. I had the tech set my Comcast cable modem to full duplex mode and my speeds now stay very consistent: