wifi suddenly slowed down? - solved -

[hotrodwinston]

No Good- with my laptop the only active device on the wifi network - sitting less than three feet from the router it has trouble loading a 360p youtube video.
with hardware encryption turned on it wont even load youtube.

Spoiler (click here to view / hide)

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"Winston's WiFi" 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 28:C6:8E:26:8B:8C   
          Bit Rate=86.7 Mb/s   Tx-Power=16 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-16 dBm 
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:4  Invalid misc:100   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

dustin@HotRodLap ~ $ iwconfig
eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"Winston's WiFi" 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 28:C6:8E:26:8B:8C   
          Bit Rate=86.7 Mb/s   Tx-Power=16 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-23 dBm 
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:5  Invalid misc:139   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

dustin@HotRodLap ~ $ iwconfig
eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"Winston's WiFi" 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 28:C6:8E:26:8B:8C   
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=16 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr: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:5  Invalid misc:169   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

[close]

all this was within 10 minutes with hardware encryption turned on - the last one was with the wired connection active just so i can post this.

[PCNetSpec]

Is this a new problem ? .. have you tried booting the previous kernel ?

[hotrodwinston]

it actually started a couple weeks ago but i was busy and couldnt look into it
but! fingers crossed after another a second reboot it seems to be working fine with hardware encryption on.
even watched a couple 720p youtube vids while my son ran netflix on the nexus player.

[PCNetSpec]

OK I'll not jinx it by saying something this time .. ooops, I just did 

[hotrodwinston]

actually - all day and its running great! im currently across the house from my router and it loads like a champ.
the only bottleneck i can find is that this 5 year old system is a hair slow on the rendering!

[hotrodwinston]

over 24 hours later and it still works fine but I have no idea what caused it to act up in the first place or what actually fixed it.
if anybody has any ideas how to prevent this from happening again please let me know
gonna go ahead and mark this solved.

[VinDSL]

if anybody has any ideas how to prevent this from happening again please let me know

I'll tell you what I do...   

I just open up my network manager, see which channel(s) my neighbors are using, and pick a different channel.

I assume NM has this feature - I don't run it.  Here's how it looks in WiCD:





Usually, when routers are set to 'auto'  they'll choose channel 1,6, or 11.   Don't ask me why - they just do.

The last time I changed the channel on my router, two of my closest neighbors were on channel 11, so I picked channel 9.  Now, the closest ones are back on channels 1 & 6.  Go figure.  That's what happens when routers are on 'auto'.

Next time my WiFi starts slowing down or disconnecting, I'll check for conflicts, and probably find one of my neighbors are using channel 9.  So, I'll change channels again.

Anyway, it's sort of a ghetto solution, but that's what I do.

[PCNetSpec]

I think you'll (at least for now) have to chuck this one in the "we'll never know the cause" tray .. unfortunately that's often the case with wireless as it can be affected by external and unknown influences.

Personally I'd have thought it was the "Auto Channel" feature combined with an outside influence such as a neighbour changing channel or buying a new router .. but we'll never know for sure.

if anybody has any ideas how to prevent this from happening again please let me know

Go around to your neighbours and EMP their routers with a electro-magnetised hammer maybe 
(please god, don't let me see this on the news later)

[EDIT]

Aaargh, I've gone blind