Need help with some computer networking issues!?

Question

Hey everyone! Well, let me start with this and make it short & quick as possible. I built my girlfriend a computer a while back and here's the specs.

Motherboard : MSI 970A-G46 AM3+ AMD 970 + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
CPU : AMD Athlon II X2 260 @ 3.2GHz
RAM : G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB
PSU : Antec 550Watt Bronze
GPU : Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition

I know the processor is pretty weak, but I wanted her to use the computer as soon as possible and not have to wait for a while since my funds were extremely limited during that time. I've been wanting to upgrade it soon.

Here's the problem, though. She's been having plenty of internet connection issues. She borrowed a wireless adapter from a friend and it would do well about..1-2 days out of the week if she was lucky; CONSTANT connection drops. I just bought her a nice wireless card I purchased from NewEgg, which has 19 5-Star reviews saying that the signal is very well and there's never any drops. She's also pretty close to the router, too. But, tonight we tested it with Skype and with her playing a game while we Skype'd. She also has her webcam on, so basically this is what we do often. Her connection became better, but still not as good as it should be. Could this possibly be due to the processor? She does usually have a game up, Skype, Spotify for music, and a few webpages to browse, so that's a pretty heavy multi-task for that small processor. Any help with this?

Answer 1

It has nothing to do with the processor. Most likely it is a function of contention for the wireless bandwidth. Not only do you have to contend with all the networks of your neighbors (really bad in an apartment situation) but there is a plethora of other devices which use the same 2.4 gHz band as most WiFi: Baby monitors, cordless phones, wireless speaker systems, bluetooth devices and microwave ovens are just the beginning of that list.



You might be able to improve things by using heavy aluminum foil to block any signals around your router in directions where you don't need it. So if you don't need the signal to broadcast downwards, put some foil under it, etc.



The best thing you can do at this point to improve your WiFi is to get a new router which supports the 802.11ac standard in addition to the b/g/n standard and to then get a 802.11ac network card for the computer. Not only is this new standard much faster (it is also referred to as gigabit WiFi) but it operates in the 5 gHz band which has substantially less traffic and contention.



Given that you say the computer is not far from the router, however, a wired connection is always superior to a WiFi connection so use that if at all possible and limit WiFi to places where that is all you can use.

Answer 2

From my somewhat limited knowledge, the CPU shouldn't be a problem, otherwise the computer itself would be running slowly. The router may be having problems, or it could be an issue with her ISP. If you could give a little bit more info, more detailed help will come.



Edit: Biff gives a great answer, listen to him.

Answer 3

better to check your network connection performance first, otherwise the rest of the work will all go in vain. To do a network test just go to:

http://www.netscan.co and click the button to start the tests.