I recently got a cheap N rated router, Its a Belkin F5D8233UK4 and has 300 mbps Draft N. http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=378086 My dad has a XP pc with a 300 mbps dongle on his pc which is other end of the house, he doesn't get many signal bars but the speed of it is about 230mbps. I have just installed a TP-Link TL-WN951N card in my 7 x64 machine which is a certified N 300mbps card which is in the room above the router. http://www.tp-link.com/products/productDetails.asp?pmodel=TL-WN951N I had an issue with drivers but that was down to my Kaspersky security. My machine has a speed of only 54mbps. I've had a look on some of the tp-link links but didn't see much. Are there any settings i can try to get the speed up a bit?
Draft N products aren't guaranteed to work with other brands, I expect that's the problem with your card.
Also sounds like a weak signal if your dads only getting a few bars. Try relocating the PC, What can sometimes help id getting a usb extension cable and getting the dongle slightly higher. Having a dongle shoved in the back of a pc isn't the greatest place for it and the fronts not that much better either .
make sure you update the firmware on your router to the latest, and also, make sure your drivers are up to date
I've tried to update the firmware but doesn't want to work, got all the correct stuff but router says wrong file even though its from belkins web site. Anyway, i think i have got it faster, maybe not up to its maximum but so far mine has gone from 54mbps to 150mbps, which is what i wanted. I finally managed to find about the wireless security settings and changing it to wpa2. If i can find anymore out i'll post it
I finally had a reply from TP-Link, i emailed them a while ago, they basically said try changing to just N wireless. While no one else was online (as not all pc's are N yet) i tried N only, and my pc went straight to full 300mbps. i changed it back to G\N and it was back to 150mbps. On this belkin router there is a wireless setting for Bandwidth 20mhz or 20\40mhz. in short, for me to get the 300mbps wireless on this router i changed the wireless security to WPA\WPA2 and changed the Channel Bandwidth to 20\40mhz. Thanks for the advice guys
I have the same router as you. Before I got the the Belkin Wireless N1 express card, the legacy g standard adapters signal in my centrino laptop was rubbish. The router certainly works best when it's set to n only output.
