Hoping someone can lend a hand here. We have a high-speed connection through our cable provider. It's run into their modem and into our DLink AirPlus Extreme G (DI-624) wireless router. My husband has an IBM Thinkpad T42 laptop and I have a Dell Latitude D600 laptop. During the day, when I am home alone working. The connection is fine. When my husband logs on at night, it slows down. But if I ask him to turn off his laptop, the system is still very slow. I can't figure out if it's his computer slowing us down, both of us online, or if it's someone using our wifi without our knowledge. A couple of other things to note: phone, cable, and high-speed are all through the same cable company. Can that have anything to do with it? They came out a few weeks ago due to dropped packets and reran some wires, but it doesn't seem any better. We both need to log into VPNs as well to check e-mail and access corporate internet, but even when we bypass our respective VPNs - it doesn't seem to help either. My signal strength is excellent. Any advice would be appreciated. My inital guesses are bad router, someone stealing our wi-fi signal since it's mostly at night, our computers have bonded together against the humans in the house and it's only a matter of time before they take over...

Most wifi routers can restrict access to certain MAC addresses. I use this, along with WEP to secure my wife's office wireless. While it's not the most effective, it stops most users from logging on. You can also review your router logs to see if there's unauthorized activity on your LAN.

Did the cable company work in your house - or just up to it? If they didn't work in your house, you might want to try splitting the cable where it comes into the house - with one side going straight to the modem and the other side to power the TV's, phone, etc.

Wireless throughput drops off the further you are from the router (or the more stuff that's in between the router and your PC).

But, it appears that the key thing here is that it occurs when your husband logs on. If this is the case, I'd first try having your husband setup another account on his system. Then have him logon with this new account and see if the behavior occurs. Have him step through each part of the logon process while you check the throughput.

If the throughput doesn't suffer with the new account - then it's a problem with the old account. If it does, then it's a problem with the common components/drivers/settings that the system uses. (BTW - he can safely delete the new account once he's done testing).

Here's a nice, free tool for tracking packets on a system (use it on your husband's and compare it with yours): http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/TdiMon.html

Thanks! I am not the most literate when it comes to Wifi. How can I check my router log and check to make sure WEP is enabled?

The cable company did install it in the house and it is split using a spliter right now. I tried not using the TV in the same room and it didn't help...

By my husband's account, what do you mean exactly?

Sorry if the questions are stupid, just trying to figure this all out...

To find out about your router, you'll have to log into it's interface in your web browser. Most commonly the address is http://192.168.0.1 for DLink routers.

Just open the above link in your web browser. If you get a popup asking for a user name and password - try "admin" (without the quotes) and leave the password blank.

From within this interface you can cruies around and check to see if WEP is enabled, and you will also be able to check the router logs (if enabled). If they're not enabled, you'll be able to enable them in the interface.

On your husband's computer, go to Start...Control Panel...User Accounts - and create another account there with administrator privileges. Then, log off your husband's current account and onto the new account. See if this makes the slowdown go away. If it does, then your husband's account is as fault. If it doesn't, then we'll have to look at other stuff.

PS - the only stupid question is the unasked one! I learned about computers because others cared enough to help me find my way through them - this is my way of paying them back for their help to me.

Also another thing to note is that with cable the connection speed isn't all the stable... depending on how many people are on the network (how many people are watching tv, talking on the phone, using the internet) this can effect the connection.

I nottice a drop in download speeds from around 6-6:30 and the reason for that is that alot of people watch the news...