How to get my internet working properly?

I

iwin4prep

New Member
Hi all, here is my situation:

I just moved into a spacious one bedroom in Chicago. I got RCN 50 mbps service installed this past weekend.

I have a few devices: 1 "gaming" desktop, 1 macbook laptop, 1 smart phone

For practical purposes, the internet works well on all three (timely, but haven't truly tested it out streaming etc.).

On my 'gaming' computer, it is showing only 2 bars signal out of the 5. This concerns me!

I have a new modem, but my router is a Linksys E1200 router. The RCN guy said that I should upgrade to Linksys AC1200 router to get better results.
I currently use a AE1000 USB wireless connector for the gaming computer to get internet.


My thoughts are that I should upgrade to the AC1200 router and also get the AC1200 wireless adapter for my gaming computer and that would fix my problems.

OR

Could it be that I'm too far away from the router? The router is in the living room and my gaming computer is in my bedroom. Not super far away from each other, but not right next to each other either.

Essentially, with this information, do you think that getting the router + wireless adapter would fix the 2/3 bars of signal I get on my gaming computer and ultimately give me faster connection?

Thank you for your help,
Ron
 
Hello,

I'd probably upgrade that router anyway, it doesn't offer the 5 GHz band that is very beneficial in a shared living environment.

If you can use something like InSSIDer you can view other neighboring wireless traffic (there are a few free ones on the Android/Apple store for phones such as Wifi Analyzer), on 2.4 GHz it becomes very congested due to the limited amount of non-overlapping channels (3).

You should be able to verify the RSSI toward your router in that utility, which is the actual signal strength. Sometimes the bars don't do a very good job of representing actual signal.

I would also suggest if possible running a wired connection from the gaming PC to the router. You'll get a much more consistent experience and not be subjected to interference from other networks.
 
Thanks for the speedy reply and recommendations.

I am definitely leaning towards upgrading, especially after your comments. I will try to look into the InSSIDer program.

Also, thanks for the suggestion with the wired connection, when I get things more set up, that sounds like the ideal situation.
 
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