Wireless N issues

Recently I bought a new wireless N router, the Linksys E1500 to improve my home wireless network.  In this blog I talk about my experiences with it and things I learned to maximize its use.

My previous network consisted of a wireless router+modem provided by ATT ar part of the U-verse upgrade.  The ATT router supported "G" speeds.  It was working fine but I have been observing some throughput issues occasionally while viewing videos from the internet.  Couple this with the fact that I want to move to the next speed tier (12 Mbps from 6 Mbps), I thought it would be a good idea to do the upgrade.  I was also encouraged by the fact that my last upgrade from B to G was very pleasant - I could visibly see the difference while connecting to the internet.  So here is a summary of why I wanted to do the upgrade:
* IP telephony (need for QoS)
* Upgrade to higher speed tier (12 Mbps) internet connection
* Expected improvement in browsing and video streaming
* Expected improvement in internal network performance (PC-to-laptop, etc).
* Added a video camera for surveylence - uses QoS

The upgrade procedure was trivial, and immediately I saw significant improvement while loading pages - Yahoo portal loaded in one second vs several.  The prior bottleneck could have been in the wireless side of the ATT router, or the G channel itself.  Anyways, I am now past it.

Then I ran into one minor and one major problem.  The minor one was that on my laptops (Lenovo T400 and MacBook Air) I would only see link speeds of 144Mbps or so - not 300 as claimed by the advertizing literature.  I considered it minor because link speed of 144M itself is good enough for me.

The bigger problem was my desktop, which has the ASUS PCE-N13 PCI express card capable of N speeds (up to 30 Mbps), sitting on floor with antenna at the back.  Between the antenna and the router are about three walls and a door, and the PC's metal case.

I found that after switching to N, the PC became very slow - stuttering mouse, extremely slow page loads - maybe worse than dial-up.  Something was obviously wrong from the PC side.  So I tried to scan for viruses, tweaked some network parameter (See my other blog) and played around with wireless setting on both ends.  Nothing really helped.  I upgraded the drivers and that fixed the stuttering, but the speeds were still dismal.  I ran internet speed tests from my Lenovo and the PC from the same spot and saw download speeds of 5.7 Mbps from the PC and bets case of around 3 Mbps from the PC - consistently.  Restricting the channel width to 20MHz (as apposed to allowing 20 and 40) from the router helped in stability of the PC-router link (otherwise the link was also very unstable - kept disconnecting).

Finally I moved the PC around a bit, as well as the router.  Things seem to change favorably.  I proceeded down the signal strength path and finally got the PC to work.  Here are the exact things I did to make it work:

* Moved the router into the same room
* Turned the PC box such that the two ends are in line-of-sight - only air in between (or occasionally my body)
* Changed the PC card's setting to enable "CAM".  Don't know what it is my somewhere on the web I was this in relation to ralink/PCE-N13 settings.

I got the download speeds (from PC) to be back to 5.7 Mpps again!  Hooray!  I then re-enabled 40 MHz b/w on the router.  Lo and behold!  I saw 300 Mbps link speed on my laptop.  Alas, the PC peaked at 150Mbps.  Of course internet access is superb.

I can now look forward to upgrading my internet speed to 12 Mbps.  You may say "even with G it makes sense for 12Mbps to work".  Theoretically yes, but my experience in moving from G to N says otherwise.  Ideally I should not have seen any difference in browsing, but that is not the case.  While running a speed test may not show a difference, random browsing displays a different behavior.

I found this article to contain material that explains why the above approach worked:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-basics/30664-5-ways-to-fix-slow-80211n-speed

I will next try out the WMM trick and see if that helps the PC case.  Will update this blog later...

Outlook IMAP setup for gmail

UPDATE:  Due to an automatic software update that came through my company's infrastructure, the registry was reset and I started seeing the old problem of Outlook not being able to connect to gmail.  So I went ahead and repeated the regedit steps and that solved the problem.

I tried setting up outlook to connect to my gmail account using IMAP.  I tried all instructions but got stumped at one place: I could not set password for logging into my account because the box was greyed out.  This problem may not be seen by all, but those who do would know what I am talking about.  I looked around and found this very useful steps:

Method 1: Fix Registry

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security set EnableRememberPwd to .1 Then Verify (see below)
2. If that fails you can try this: Gpedit.msc>UserConfig>AdminTemplates>MSOutlook2007>Security: ensure that "Disable 'Remember Password" is not configured or not Enabled –  Then Verify (see below)
3. How to verify it worked:
1. After restart START | SETTINGS | CONTROL PANEL | MAIL ACCOUNTS| View or change existing e-mail accounts
2. NEXT Mark your personal default EMail Account and press CHANGE
3. On this Tab, type your password, click to select Remember Password | APPLY | OK
4. Start Outlook and try to send/receive

If that fails you can try this:
1. START | RUN | regedit
2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Protected Storage System Provider
3. Mark this key SECURITY | PERMISSIONS | ADVANCED
4. In the Access Control Settings for Protected Storage System Provider window, under the Permissions tab, click to select the Reset Permissions for all child objects and enable propagation of inheritable permissions check box, and then click OK .
5. After that you receive a prompt box, please Click OK to close all windows and get back to the Registry Editor
6. Double click the Protected Storage System Provider folder, and delete the subkey folder, usually starts with an "S" and after that many numbers.
7. Exit the registry and restart your system

Vista Network Problems

Network Issue: Slow loading with low CPU overhead
Symptom: CPU and memory load is low, but:

• Internet access seems slow
• Mouse is jerky

There are a number of suggestions on the web:

1. netsh tool: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929868
2. Disable phishing: Disable the Phishing filter and you have to do it in the "Internet & Network" tab.

Will update this bolg as I learn more.

UPDATE: Upgrading the ralink drivers for my PCI-express card - ASUS PCE-N13 wireless N card helped a lot with the stutter.