Who knows routers?

Limited by the provider? My provider limits to 152.6 kbps :) If I want more I have to pay for it.(I don't)

Have you checked for the optimum MTU?

If you don't know what MTU is or how to check it, no router will provide maximum throughput.

Check out the tools at http:/

John

Jikes, "free" membership required.......

Hi!

And what kind of router is the replacement? Make and model, please!

It's very doubtful that this is the router's fault, as nearly all of them sold today contain much more capability than would ever be required to route data from the public Internet to your private network.

Since you mentioned that the computer transfers information much more quickly when connected directly to the cable modem, have you checked to see if your cable company may require you to register the MAC address of a different device attached to the modem?

Did you power cycle the cable modem after switching what was attached to it? You should do so.

If that is the case, a device may continue to work but reduced transfer speed may be the result. (Normally, a block would be put into place for an unrecognized device, but that is determined by the cable company.)

Some fine tuning may be required to get the best performance. Ask your cable company if they have any recommendations as to how things should be set up. Also, check your cabling and make sure it is good.

If possible, try to verify if the problem occurs over both wired and wireless connections to a computer. Wireless connections can be subject to interference from other wireless networks and devices operating on or around the same frequency.

William

That's just for PPP connections and VPN.

Model and firmware version?

Is that bits or bytes? For a cable modem, my guess(tm) would be bytes giving you 1.2 to 1.6Mbits/sec. That's kinda slow. What is your unspecified cable connection advertised to deliver?

So, now kilo-packets-per-second. Amazing. Assuming that's also bytes, that would be 5.6 to 7.2Mbits/sec, which is still kinda slow. On the left coast, we get burstable speeds of 10-18Mbits/sec.

Because you're probably using a CAT5 cable when testing your cable modem, but using wireless to benchmark the router.

What kind of downloads? If you're doing Bitorrent, you're limited to the speed of the sending software/music/video thieves connection. Speeds tend to be rather slow. If you're downloading from a reputable archive site, such as getting the latest Linux distribution, you'll be throttled by the sending site to whatever they feel appropriate. Using downloads for benchmarking your connection isn't very accurate. Neither are online speed tests, that are remotely located through far too many congested hops. The only ones that really work are the speed test sites maintained by your ISP (TW/RR) which are the fewest hops to your computah.

I suggest you find the official Time Warner cable modem speed test site. I can't tell where you're hiding so you'll have to either disclose your location or find it yourself. For example, here's the one for Buffalo, New York:

If you're benchmarking your downloads using a wireless link, you are probably getting some intereference from the neighbors. Troubleshooting this is a bit complicated and I don't want to go into it with what little you've disclosed. At a minimum, try different wireless channels (1, 6, or 11) to avoid the interference source. Also, try your benchmark and download tests via a wired connection, to hopefully better identify the problem.

If you suspect that your unspecified model Belkin router is a problem, the first thing to do is upgrade the firmware. Check the Belkin web pile.

You can also do your own benchmarking of the router using two computahs and iPerf or Jperf.

Ask you if you need help with this.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
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Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Was the Belkin *also* a wireless router? (i.e., your problem is likely due to the "wireless" nature of the medium -- poor signal quality or interference from neighboring access points, etc.).

Do you have any tools that aid in network discovery? Anything you can use to identify other (wireless) networks in your vicinity? (Hard to give specifics without knowing what OS you are running, etc.) If so, see if other "nearby" access points (they are "nearby" if your system can *see* them! :> ) are using the same channel. Most routers configure for channel

6 out-of-the-box. If you haven't explicitly changed *yours*, chances are your neighbors haven't changed *theirs*, either! Move to channel 1 or 11 (there is some overlap in adjacent channels so you want to move as far away as is practical).

Also, you need to determine if your link is operating on

2.4GHz or 5GHz -- the former tends to see lots of interference from (some) cordless phones, microwave ovens, bluetooth stuff, etc. Just because you have an N router doesn't mean it is currently operating at N rates.

Assuming you've been careful about your use of abbreviations,

200kbps is only 25kBps. That's pretty lousy even for a noisy wireless link. You should see something like 50Mbps (6MBps) on a wireless G or N link -- assuming your data source can keep the pipe full.

Many wireless routers have a *wired* hub/switch built in. Try running a cable from one of those ports to your machine. If this gives you performance comparable to the performance that you achieved with the "direct to modem" connection, then it points to a wireless issue.

If *not*, it points to a configuration problem in the router.

I'm only using hardwired router, I have the wireless transmitter turned off.

Most wireless routers nowadays include some smarts (NAT, firewall, etc.). This requires CPU (the CPU inside the router) overhead.

Wireless routers are typically designed as three "blocks":

- wireless interface

- WAN interface (i.e., connection to modem)

- LAN interface (i.e., connection to your host(s))

The LAN interface is often augmented with a hardware *switch*. This routes packets between interfaces (i.e., connectors on the "switch") at hardware speeds. The switch learns the IP addresses of traffic on each of the interfaces and adapts accordingly.

Going from WAN to LAN (or LAN to wireless, or wireless to WAN, etc.) means going through the CPU. This takes more effort and is subject to bugs, etc. (i.e., make sure you have the latest firmware for your router!).

Since you have ruled out the wireless link as a part of your current operating configuration, next rule out the WAN by connecting the modem to one of the *other* LAN ports (i.e., in this arrangement, you are just talking to the modem through the switch instead of involving the CPU, software, etc.)

You might also want/need to enlarge the Rx windows and/or MTTU on the router *or* your PC.

Since you've seen this problem with two different routers, I have to wonder whether some element other than the router itself is causing the problem.

Were you by any chance using the same Ethernet cable between your cable-modem and the two routers? If so, try swapping this for another (professionally made, "known good") cable, and see if things clear up. Also try swapping your PC-to-router / PC-to-modem cable with a known-good cable.

I've seen a number of Ethernet cables which were either defective, or damaged, in ways which caused them to appear to work but to be rather unreliable (high rate of packet loss).

A loose or cracked wire (or a bad crimp at one of the RJ-45 jacks) is one such flaw.

Another sort of trouble-making cable is one in which the wire pairs were crimped onto the wrong pins. The four twisted-pair wires in an Ethernet cable are supposed to be crimped onto the pins in a specific order... and if a naive user/builder crimps them wrongly (in a straight-across order) the cable will appear to work in some situations, but you'll get unreliable operation with a high rate of packet interference.

Looking downwards at the wires in a good cable I have here, with the pins visible but facing away from me, I seen the following order:

OR/WH OR GR/WH BL BL/WH GR BR/WH BR

(colors are orange, green, blue, brown, and also white with stripes of the aforementioned colors). The important things to note are:

- The leftmost two pins form a pair (orange, and orange/white)

- The rightmost two pins form a pair (brown, and brown/white)

- The innermost-two pins form a pair (blue, and blue-white)

- The two remaining pins (which are *not* immediately adjacent to one another) form the final pair (green, and green/white). An INCORRECT way of constructing the cable would be

OR/WH OR GR/WH GR BL/WH BL BR/WH BR

In this arrangement, you'd actually be "splitting a pair" in two cases. The two centermost pins would be crimped to the green, and blue/white wires, and a transmission on these pins would be driving a signal down wires in two different twisted pairs. Ditto for a transmission on the next-outermost set of pins, which are crimped to blue and green/white.

A cable of this sort may appear to work, but there will be a lot of crosstalk between signals. It may work tolerably well in a half-duplex 10BaseT system (e.g. with a hub, or with many PC-to-modem hookups) but will work quite badly in a full-duplex 10BaseT or

100BaseT setup (e.g. with a switch).

--
Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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     boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Cyclic Redundancy Check errors are a common issue with router firmware.

I reset the pig to factory defaults and turned off the wireless transmitter. Works ok now. The wireless pig never worked anyway. Couldn't get my laptop to even see a fracking signal. Don't buy a Netgear Wireless N 300 WNC2000. At least I could connect wirelessly to my old Belkin with only WEP security.