Wi-fi speeds... I don't understand!

[cakeaddict]

Disclaimer to start: I am very un-techy so might need answers in words of one syllable only!

I have recently bought a new laptop. When I use the wi-fi, the internet runs really slowly. The wi-fi speed seems to drop to between 18-36 mbps. When I connect through a network cable, I get 100mbps.

The old laptop works fine on the wi-fi, making me think the issue is related to the computer rather than the wi-fi network - on the old computer I get wi-fi speeds of 50mbps.

Any ideas??

Well, wi-fi will always be slower than cabled, so the fact that you get better speed through an ethernet cable is normal. However, I'm concerned that you say it runs 'really slowly' but have speeds of 18-36mbps. That is actually still really rather fast, and far faster than most of the UK can get for their broadband in general. Are you sure that number is correct? If you are, I would say there is something else going on here. What, exactly, is slow? File downloading? Pages loading? And when you say 'slow', what are we talking about in absolute terms? ie, how long does it take a mumsnet page to load, or before a short youtube video will play smoothly?

Yes, that's definitely the right number.

By slow I mean slow to load a page - for example last night I was trying to buy something online and just couldn't complete the transaction, kept getting page errors. I then used the network cable and completed the transaction easily. I'm also getting quite a lot of 'DNS' (?) errors, Google Chrome saying pages don't exist - then 30 seconds later they do. I haven't timed a MN page loading, but I'd say it's taking around a minute, maybe?

Yep, I'll agree that's very slow! Next question (and after this I'll stop assuming you're reading it wrong, promise!) - are you sure that's M (megabytes) per second, not kB? Because in that case the number you're seeing would, in fact, be representative of a very slow speed.

Either way, I would start by looking at the security settings on the laptop and what else it's doing. Do you have a firewall? They occasionally get themselves muddled and start slowing things down. Is something else downloading in the background on the new laptop? For example, if it's new, is it trying to download and apply a massive Windows Update, like a service pack?

Has it ever worked? If the laptop is brand new, and it's done this since the day you got it, it's also possible it's a hardware fault, probably in the wireless card.