Want to upgrade wired/wireless to match 1 gigabit speeds

Swaglife81 · 26 Jul 2016

I have 1 gigabit internet I upgraded to about 6 months ago and the upgrade was huge in real life performance especially bandwidth/ping. The speeds never get throttled and my house is full 4-5 people on 1 router. BUT..... My download speeds are meh compared to the budget basic internet package. I know my PC is somewhat out of date on hardwire as its a software updated 2013 model. My ethernet is a Realtek PCI FE 10/100 setup and my wireless is a basic 802.11n Broadcom.

Right now I'm wired with a ethernet cable capable of more than I can through at it. My router is a 2.4/5 ghz router and I think reach 750 Mbps, not sure on exact speeds. The tech at the house said he got 900 Mbps wired.

So from my understanding I have 3 options for upgrades.

1. Ethernet Adapter
2. Usb Dongle
3. 802.11AC Internal mini half card

Just want to fix my bottleneck as its my computer. Service, Router, and wiring/location are great

AmericanPharaoh · 26 Jul 2016

Hello Josh,

Your system specs, shows Dell Inspiron 15 3521 Laptop with Intel Celeron 1017U CPU and 4GB of RAM.
http://www.notebook-driver.com/dell-...op-tech-specs/

The below link should address most of your concerns:
http://www.wikihow.com/Upgrade-Your-...gabit-Ethernet

It appears your Main Circuit Board does not support 1GB Internet speeds which is explained in the above tutorial.

Hope this helps,
John

tracit99 · 26 Jul 2016

Looks like based on system specs your only options are the USB dongle or an AC mini half card. I have no experience with USB dongles and cannot provide a recommendation. I do have experience with AC mini half card and you should be made aware that not all cards will work in your laptop. The problem is due to the BIOS in the laptop. Many manufactures include what is called a Whitelist of acceptable hardware and store it in the BIOS. I ran it to this when upgrading my seven years old HP dv7-1444us laptop with an Intel 3160ac mini half card. On reboot I got a warning about incompatible hardware and to remove and restart. I eventually found a third party BIOS mod with the Whitelist removed. This is not a solution that I would recommend but I did get the Intel 3160ac to work. So just be forewarned. Your best bet at this point is to investigate the USB dongles.

AmericanPharaoh · 26 Jul 2016

Your Laptop will handle up to 8GB of Memory. It would certainly help with faster program loads.

Check out this memory scan tool.
http://www.crucial.com/

manish9009 · 27 Jul 2016

NO GO for you Bro..
even you put a faster AC WLAN card.. your computer cant handle it..
Use Ethernet for faster connection. No matter what Kind of WLAN Card you will Apply.. It wont be greater than Ethernet

bro67 · 27 Jul 2016

It will never happen. Because of how packets are sent and received, you will never reach a continuous Gigabyte speed. Your burst rate may top out close to 1gbps, but it will never be that all of the time, since not every packet is going to be the same size or not be sent or received without some kind of CRC issue.

Also it matters what the WAN to LAN, CPU, RAM for the Gateway. All of that can be checked out at Small Net Builder.

AmericanPharaoh · 28 Jul 2016

Looks like it's time for you to buy a new PC which can handle the high speed Internet you're looking for.

John

bro67 · 28 Jul 2016

tracit99 said:

Looks like based on system specs your only options are the USB dongle or an AC mini half card. I have no experience with USB dongles and cannot provide a recommendation. I do have experience with AC mini half card and you should be made aware that not all cards will work in your laptop. The problem is due to the BIOS in the laptop. Many manufactures include what is called a Whitelist of acceptable hardware and store it in the BIOS. I ran it to this when upgrading my seven years old HP dv7-1444us laptop with an Intel 3160ac mini half card. On reboot I got a warning about incompatible hardware and to remove and restart. I eventually found a third party BIOS mod with the Whitelist removed. This is not a solution that I would recommend but I did get the Intel 3160ac to work. So just be forewarned. Your best bet at this point is to investigate the USB dongles.

The White List has been done away with. I use the Intel 7260 Dual Band mini-PCIe on both laptops in my house.

bro67 · 28 Jul 2016

AmericanPharaoh said:

Looks like it's time for you to buy a new PC which can handle the high speed Internet you're looking for.

John

That will never happen, since there is no wireless device out there that will do a continuous stream of 1gbps. The packets vary on what kind of data is in them, along with if the CRC is correct when the packets are sent back and forth. Even with a Wired Connection, you will never get lab result speeds, no matter how hard that you try.

The OP laptop will do just fine. Gig service is great if you are moving files or playing games through a Wired Connection. Majority of streaming media devices and game systems only use a 10/100 Ethernet Connection or Wireless-N Single channel.

Berton · 28 Jul 2016

bro67 said:

That will never happen, since there is no wireless device out there that will do a continuous stream of 1gbps. The packets vary on what kind of data is in them, along with if the CRC is correct when the packets are sent back and forth. Even with a Wired Connection, you will never get lab result speeds, no matter how hard that you try.

The OP laptop will do just fine. Gig service is great if you are moving files or playing games through a Wired Connection. Majority of streaming media devices and game systems only use a 10/100 Ethernet Connection or Wireless-N Single channel.

To add a practical note: Gigabit is for the Ethernet/Wired connection between the Computer and the Router for an internal/LAN Local Area Network, actually has nothing to do with the Internet service/speed you are paying your ISP/Internet Service Provider for. Fastest I've seen advertised in my area is 60Mbps, I only get 5Mbps for my $50 but it is quite sufficient, much better than the 33.6Kbps I got with dial-up 20 years ago. The only thing faster is Cable service at 30-60Mbps but it comes at a higher cost. The term WAN/Wide Area Network is where the connection leaves your control or goes 'out there', lets you connect to devices in some other place, which is essentially the same as the Internet [connecting to other computers/servers].