I Need A Internet Techie

[RedLegSuperStar]

Lately my Wi-Fi has been cutting in and out and giving me a low signal strength while playing MW3. My service provider is Time Warner and I have Road Runner Turbo. My router is a NetGear N300 (WNR3500L). I was wondering what is a good connection speed and how to test the speeds (Kbps). Anyone who can help me, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Own iMac so if there's a test it'd have to be iOS compatible. Also I have a iPhone 4S so if there's a good app to download as well.

[Blimpie]

I am not meaning to gravy-train off your post, but yours is a very topical query for me, as well.

Each holiday season, my family of five seems to acquire more and more wireless devices in our home. In fact--if you consider laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, tvs, blue ray players, printers, and gaming systems, we now use 17 wireless devices on a semi-regular basis.

We have 20.0 MB broadband internet through our cable provider and a (highly rated) Cisco wireless router that I believe is about 1 year old. No matter how close I am to the routing antennae, I struggle to get more than 2 of 3 wi-fi bars on certain devices.

Can anyone recommend a good wi-fi booster--or signal enhancer--that would allow us to benefit from our intended signal strength?

[OldRightHander]

For starters I would upgrade the router. I'm not what anyone would call an expert, but I went up to a Netgear N600 from my old N300 and I noticed a difference right away. I play MW3 a bit as well.

[Roy Tucker]

Not an easy question to answer because of all the variables. Its one thing if you have one person surfing the net and its another thing if mom is watching NetFlix, Junior is in the basement playing Xbox on the net, daughter is playing a video on her smartphone up in her room, and dad is VPN'ed into work. And then you have RF issues from your neighbor's routers and then everyone in the neighborhood has the same profile as above and we're all trying to cram gigabytes of throughput over the same pipe.

I suggest reading: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347539,00.asp (and links off of it) to get a handle on all the variables at play.

A friend of mine sent me this link and I thought it was interesting http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wirel...x-bad-wireless

[Stray]

First off what I would do is go to http://speedtest.net/

From there you will be able to test your download and upload speeds. Just so you don't waste any money what I would do is test your wifi speeds, then plug directly into a computer and test your non wifi speeds. If there is a big difference you will know that you are losing a lot of speed through your wireless setup. Sometimes something as simple as adjusting your routers settings or updating its firmware will do the trick, other times it's best to buy a new router.

Before throwing money at anything I would test out your speeds plugged in and through wifi just to be sure. Also, I'm not sure what package you're paying for through your ISP, but say for example you are getting 10 mbps, you may need to bump up your package if there are other devices using the internet at the same time. Like say someone is gaming while another person is streaming Netflix, it's gonna use up a lotta resources.

[fearofpopvol1]

Do you live in an apartment building? If you do, most routers are on similar frequencies and this can cause problems. Do you have cable with TWC as well? And if so, have you had any issues with the cable or DVR? It could be a line is bad too. I don't know of that router of the top of my head. Is it a newer one? It may not hurt to try getting a new one. I would keep the box and receipt and if that doesn't solve the problem, I would take it back.