Having Trouble With My New Wireless Card

Yesterday I got a new 108Mbps wireless card to replace my 54Mbps card.
My current 54Mbps card is a D-Link AirPlus G (DWL-6510) and the new 108Mbps card is a TP-Link TL-WN651G.

I installed the card and once I booted up the PC it automatically installed the required drivers for me. I thought this was a bit odd because a device like this has never done that for me before. The card had poor signal (1-2 bars constant) so I opened device manager and got the card to search for new drivers, the drivers were installed and the cards signal maxed out at 5 bar.

After about 5 mins of use the card kept losing internet signal and I had to refresh pages many times to get them to load up. Eventually the card disconnected fully from the network. I re-booted thinking it may just be a "new hardware glitch" which my Vista based PC always gets when I install new hardware, always takes a few boots to get it working properly. It worked slightly better this time but I had the same symptoms as before. I tried this a few more times but the problem still persists.

I opened the device properties in device manager and it says that the speed of the card is only running at 54Mbps, this is a little strange seeing as it is a 108Mbps card. We have a Belkin N1 MIMO WiFi router capable of 300Mbps so I don't think the router is the problem. The router broadcasts 802.11b/g/n so it covers the whole signal spectrum. My new wireless card runs at 802.11b.

Can any of you shed some light on my little connection problem and why my card is only running at half it's quoted speed.

How far are you from your router? Sometimes when you are further, it will slow down. I have experienced this when using a long distance antenna and it drops to 24 and 18 MBps

I would only be about 15metres away from the router with the signal passing through only 3 walls. My 54mbps card never had signal problems.

Hmm, then I'm not sure
Good luck!

Thanks for your help and the quick responses Trace.

I am actually using the new card right now, it is still only running as 54Mbps though. My old 54Mbps card actually runs faster than this one at the moment lol.

lol No problem, just wish that was the issue.

Maybe channel issues? I had 1 computer that would run fine and another one with the same card in the same room would have problems keeping the signal. I just adjusted the channels till the problem went away. Maybe this card is more sensitive to another router in the area and its having trouble keeping on the channel you already had on the other card. Just something to look into.

We live on a property about 1km away from the closest house around us, I don't think it is interference from another network. How would I go about changing the channel?

Router settings - Wireless section.

For xp x64 edition, for my card with a realtek chip, I just started using the utility provided with their drivers, and it stopped doing that, and still works fine.

The channel selection was set to Auto but I will cycle through all 13 channels to see which one works best. Thanks for all your help guys. The card still only shows up as 54mbps though.

Well I got I started at channel one and after worked my way though to channel 5 and that is when the network crashed completely. The whole wireless network went down and I had to reset everything. I'm not game enough to try the other 8 channels lol.

I'd say that there's definitely something wrong with your hardware. Did you upgrade the firmware on your router yet?

The firmware on the router is completely up to date. I have heard that the 108Mbps cards are being phased out and the router firmware doesn't support it anymore. I will try to roll back to an earlier version.

I am also going to remove the drivers for the card then use the TP-Link utility to install the adapter, the thing is the utility doesn't work for me.

Download the drivers from the TP-Link website, but since you're using Vista, just use the ones Vista downloads itself.

Already tried that. The adapter has the latest drivers.

Download the software from the MFG website. They usually have utillity apps that let you adjust power to the attenna to increase signal strength. Perhaps the card defaults to 54mbps and you need to change it.

Some routers even have the higher speeds disabled by default.

The only think is I can't find that app on th TP-LINK site. They only have driver packs for the desired cards which is meant to come with the app. The app is meant to install with the driver but doesn't for me. I have sent the tech support an email asking for a direct download link to the app.

I just checked my email and this is what they sent me:

QUOTE:
Dear Jason,

Thank you very much for your email requesting information about our product.



1. The 108M mode only can be used when both of the device support Super G technology, TL-WN651G is a wireless 11G device, but Belkin N1 router is a wireless 11N router, it can works more than 108M when it work with other 11N device, and Belkin router do not support Super G technology when it work on 11G mode, that’s why they can not work together at 54Mbps.



2. the Utility now can not be used under Vista OS, but now our R & D is working to release the Utility that supports Vista, and it will come out a few weeks later.



Any further help please feel free to let me know.

Best Regards

This seems strange to me because the router I have does state that it broadcasts on g, b and n.

Looks like I just wasted $40, maybe I should just take it back and spend an extra $40 to get one from D-Link.

Looks like the tech support guy in India just used a pre-written form with poor grammar.

Yeah the answer sounds a bit generic. If he actually did look at the router I have he would have noticed that it does in fact supports b grade wireless cards.

802.11b doesn't really matter since they only run at 11mbps.

I think the other problem is the lack of the actual configuration utility for Vista. From what I have read you can control speeds and that sort of stuff through it, which I can't do at the moment with out it. I will have to wait for the Vista update to be released.

I'll boot my machine into Vista and see if I can change speeds to 11mbps. No utility was installed.

I have already checked. The 54Mbps card has about 20 more options I can play with in device manager. The 108Mbps only has about 5, I think the majority of the tinkering needs to be done from within the utility itself rather than vista.