SON SON
If you want to get the most out of your router, for wired and home plug (power line) networks, check the network activity icon in the taskbar to see if a PC is connected at 10, 100 or 1,000Mbits/sec, if it’s stuck at 10Mbits/sec, which happens with older network cards that can’t auto-negotiate these settings correctly, go to the device manager, right click on the network card and select properties, select the Advanced tab and select the link Speed/Duplex Mode property.
If 100Mbits/sec/Full Duplex is available at this point, select it to improve performance, this is a potential bottleneck for high-speed broadband packages, if you’re using a Wi-Fi router, inspect how many other wireless networks you can detect from inside your home, for the best detection, use a free utility such as network stumbler (www.netstumbler.com), most 802.11g Wi-Fi router will let you choose between 11 different channels, but there are only three non-overlapping channels (sets of carrier frequencies), usually titled channel 1, 6 and 11 in router’s setting.
If another Wi-Fi network is using your network’s channel your performance may be affected, this is because a Wi-Fi router will receive every data packet sent in its frequency range, so if your router’s frequency overlaps with five another, your router will have to filter through five router’s signals as well as its own, discarding the data that isn’t marked for it and accepting the data that is, this is not a problem if the individual networks don’t sent much data, but if each Wi-Fi network is busy the congestion could show down your Wi-Fi connection dramatically, the newer 802.11n Wi-Fi standard makes congestion even worse, since many routers implement dual-channel modes (so two no-overlapping 20MHz channel are used, leaving just one for spare) at 2.4GHz compared to 802.11g networks, to improve speed.
There is a solution though, the 5GHz band, both 802.11g and some early 802.11n routers work in the 2.4GHz range, while newer 802.11n router have a 5GHz mode where 12 non-overlapping single channels and six non-overlapping dual channels can co-exist, this mean there can be up to 11 Wi-Fi networks within range of your wireless network and without affecting your performance.
Quality of Service
If many people share a single broadband connection, a router with advanced quality of service (QoS) functions can be godsend, QoS attaches a number to every packet of data and the lower the number, the quicker it will go, it means VoIP applications such as Skype and online games that require a low latency will given priority over less important programs such as D-Link’s DIR-855, have a intelligent QoS engines that will assign priority to your program base on its best guess, the DIR-855 also lets you set which PCs are more important on the network, so they get fastest internet access.