(Tut) Network and buffering issues
#1
So i have seen a few people talk about buffering and network issues so i thought i would try to help. This will just address wireless as if you have a wired network there is something else going on. We will cover here:-

Preamble
Channel
Bandwidth
Protection
Firmware

Preamble

Anything i say here is done at your own risk and playing with your router may kill your internet connection depending on your ISP's configuration, you have been warned and i am not to blame if you end up with no connection at all.

Your router is on your network, 99% of the time you access it via your browser by typing its ip address. To get its ip address check your default gateway, if you don’t know what the default gateway is go to a terminal and then in windows type ipconfig and in linux type ifconfig it should then be listed. There will be a username and password to access it you can get this info off your isp or else it will very likely be username=admin and password=password. These vary but also look around the physical router it may be printed on it, Of course if you bought your own router you know the password.

Channel

The problem with wireless is the fact it uses the now crowded 2.4Mhz freq, many problems come from the overlapping of other routers near you. Some routers now come with intelligent suggestion of channel which i personally have found to be unreliable, the channel you use makes a big difference, the channel range is from 1-13(14) on 2.4Mhz. So which channel do you use? Well the most reliable method i have found is to use inSSIDer, this works on windows and linux and if you want to walk around you house wifi analyser on android. (any mac versions?) This will show you a map of all the wifi routers near you, unfortunately it will not show you microwave ovens and dect phones which also interfere on this frequency but that is covered later. So once you have inSSIDer installed look for a channel that has nobody on it, as you will see they overlap so just be sensible and change it to somewhere where there is the least overlapping.

Bandwidth

So somewhere in your wireless setting you have a bandwidth control this might not be obvious at first but if not you are looking for 40Mhz this is for N routers 20Mhz for most G routers and can go down to 5Mhz set this as high as possible, some routers call it turbo/extra/best whatever. It may also have a setting which mentions upper or lower this is because it binds channels left and right across the 1-13(14) scale chose upper if there is less users higher and lower if less users lower in your inSSIDer screen. Also here there may be an option about which protocol you are using a/b/g/n turn off as many as you can, most modern devices use at least g or n so if you can turn off a and b do so. Also I have found that even if a device is g it will work on n so suck it and see. The thing is with wireless it works on the lowest device so turn off as many as you can.

Protection

WEP is crap and I can get into your network and read your personal stuff in less than 5 minutes also it is heavy on the connection WPA2 is much safer and actually uses less bandwidth than WEP so check your security tab on your router and make sure you are using WPA2 or at least WPA. Now there are a few old drivers for old chipsets that don’t support WPA and need WEP so check that out and also even if your current card is “WEP only” check the manufacturer site and see if there is a driver update to WPA usually there is.

Firmware

OK so now we go a bit in depth and if you are not comfortable please see what I wrote up there ^^. Lots of routers not all can be reflashed with an open source firmware called dd-wrt. This is an excellent firmware and will show you power levels of your connections and so even though inSSIDer did not see microwaves, dect phones etc. you will see the signal levels in this firmware, using these power levels you can move channel again and avoid the unseen interference. It's not for beginners and will reset your username, password and ip on the router so use at your own risk and check their very good wiki.

Hope this helped and any feedback for changes is welcome.
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(Tut) Network and buffering issues0