Disappointing performance PalmOne Wifi

[applejosh]

I just got the PalmOne wifi card. I've been connecting via bluetooth for a while, and I was usually able to get 80-120 kpbs. I was expecting a lot better with the wifi card. Much to my disappointment, I'm getting 138 kpbs. I am using WEP, so I guess that probably affects performance, but I was really hoping to get a lot more than 138 kbps. Throughput was measured by using the mobile dslreports speed test. Is this speed typical?

Also, is it normal to have your device soft-reset every time you plug the card in? I wouldn't think so. Maybe the installer mucked something up...

Edit: I did download the latest drivers off of PalmOne's site first. And as a comparison, my iPAQ (internal wifi) gets download speeds of 455 kpbs with the same conditions.

[jjesusfreak01]

Reset every time you put the card in? That doesnt sound right, but I cant be sure, because I dont have one. Cliepet had benchmarks for all of the cards posted somewhere on the forums (all of his good posts get lost), but im not sure where. The Sony TH, UX, and VZ, as well as the TC, have very fast wireless, but models that use the card are nowhere near as fast.

[STBXXL]

I cannot confirm your poor performance. I use the palmOne WiFi card with my T5 for 4 months now. I'm very happy with the performance. I use the following site for speed tests: http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed. When I select the 600k file I typically get between 600 kbps to 700 kbps (at home, I've also WEP enabled). I get similar data rates using different hotspots.

Not bad all. :)

Cheers.

PS: I also don't get the soft resets everytime I put the card in. I guess there's something wrong with your system.

[applejosh]

I suppose I could do a hard reset and re-test, but darn I have a lot of apps to re-install then. I think I may wait and test at home before I do the extreme.

[applejosh]

After doing some adjusting and turning off background "hack-like" programs, I can get ~250kpbs. Still a ways away from my iPAQ's 440+ kpbs, but better than before. After a hard reset, installing only the driver, I only managed about 260kbps. So, maybe it's the equipment I'm using. We use Netgear stuff at work, and I have a Netgear at home. I also tried adjusting my home router to 802.11b only just to see if that made a difference. It didn't. Adjusting the "power savings" in the driver didn't help either. Are there any other tweaks I should be looking at? (Also, for the record, I have proxy turned off in WebPro to get an accurate reading.)

[CliePet]

My measurements:
http://www.1src.com/forums/showpost.php?p=789687&postcount=2

(part of longer thread: http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82506 )

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For infrequent use, the speed differences won't matter much. If you are downloading files it will matter a lot (especially will depend on the software you use)

"WEP" does slow things down a bit, as does routing through an access point - but only a little bit (maybe 10->20% slower in typical cases)

However "138 kbps" (k bits) is really bad. I would check to see if you PC WiFi connection is using "AUTO" data rate (WiFi 802.11"b" can go up to 11Mbps, but if configured in software or if radio intererence it can drop to 5.5Mbps, 2Mbps or even 1Mbps). Add the extra overhead, it will give terrible results.

> is it normal to have your device soft-reset every time you plug the card in?
No. Try reinstalling (or worst case, hard reset and reinstall)

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> Edit: I did download the latest drivers off of PalmOne's site first. And as a comparison, my iPAQ (internal wifi) gets download speeds of 455 kpbs with the same conditions.
That's still rather slow IMHO, but it depends on the software used

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> ...I can get ~250kpbs

Better, but still not ideal. I would expect to get closer to 500 -> 800kbps if the WiFi is not congested and the software is not poor.

[applejosh]

Well, I don't know. Even after a hard reset I'm still getting what I consider sub-optimal performance. I might try and connect to the coffee house down the street from work tomorrow to see if it's just the Netgear equipment (it's an excuse to go get a bagel and coffee).

Also, I don't expect to get the great numbers you got, CliePet (although I am becoming more and more envious of TH55 users). My test is just going to text.dslreports.com/mspeed and testing. I expect there to be some latency and overhead associated with such a test, but at least I can compare throughputs from various devices. (The numbers I posted for my iPAQ were running the same test through NetFront, and the AP's were not being used by anyone other than me at the times of these tests.) Also, I just tested my NX80 with WL100 card (using NetFront as the browser) and got 80 kbps. So I guess I should count my blessings.

Thanks for the comments so far, folks.

(Oh, and I did re-install the driver software this afternoon, and I haven't (knock on wood) had any soft resets when inserting the wifi card since.)

[STBXXL]

So, maybe it's the equipment I'm using. We use Netgear stuff at work, and I have a Netgear at home. I also tried adjusting my home router to 802.11b only just to see if that made a difference. It didn't. Adjusting the "power savings" in the driver didn't help either. Are there any other tweaks I should be looking at? (Also, for the record, I have proxy turned off in WebPro to get an accurate reading.)

I don't know why you can't get higher data rates. But FYI, I also have a Netgear Wireless DSL router (with 802.11g). I use Blazer 4.0 w/o proxy on my T5. Also when I download podcast audio files (10-15 MB) via QuickNews RSS reader I get pretty good rates.

Sorry to be of no more help.

Cheers.

[applejosh]

Well, I broke down and am trying a T5 right now. With just about all the same software loaded and such, I'm getting 850kbps on my test (as opposed to the 250-280kbps on the T3) using the same setup. I don't know if it was maybe Webpro that was flaky or something else, but the performance is MUCH better with the T5. Now to continue finding out which apps have issues with the T5... (I know about the PalmFocus web page, and it has been tremendously helpful - Kudos to the member responsible for that!)

[xMist]

as well as the TC, have very fast wireless, but models that use the card are nowhere near as fast.

Actually, that's not true (for me, at least.) My Zodiac and SanDisk's WiFi SD card achieve better rates than my T|C did. ;)

[Pdaman]

I just got the PalmOne wifi card. I've been connecting via bluetooth for a while, and I was usually able to get 80-120 kpbs. I was expecting a lot better with the wifi card. Much to my disappointment, I'm getting 138 kpbs. I am using WEP, so I guess that probably affects performance, but I was really hoping to get a lot more than 138 kbps. Throughput was measured by using the mobile dslreports speed test. Is this speed typical?

Also, is it normal to have your device soft-reset every time you plug the card in? I wouldn't think so. Maybe the installer mucked something up...

Edit: I did download the latest drivers off of PalmOne's site first. And as a comparison, my iPAQ (internal wifi) gets download speeds of 455 kpbs with the same conditions.Just turn the web off. It does affect very much to speed. When i had 40bit wep on, speed was always under 50kbps/s. Now it is always more than 150kbps/s so it is three times faster! Before when i had wep on it was impossible to stream music using pocket tunes, but now i can du that also. Wep is good security option for home network hackers but you can't enjoy so much about your wireless if it is on so turn the web off and get good firewall to your computers and that its. Btw 455 kpbs is fast! I get about 200kbps as max speed.

[blackcarrera]

I've turned my wep off and now get 200KB per second with my TH55.

[applejosh]

Yeah, I'm not going to turn off WEP. Sorry. That's just a silly thing to do, IMHO. I'd rather get slower performance on my Palm device (which was the only device to experience such cruddy performance) then to risk having some idiot use my connection to download illegal things or worse, hack my system. I may end up dumping the Palm stuff altogether and start using WPA (which the iPAQ can do). It's really a shame that PalmOne hasn't been able to come up with drivers to support WPA (I'm not even asking for 802.11i and AES).

[dps5pt]

Yeah, I'm not going to turn off WEP. Sorry. That's just a silly thing to do, IMHO. I'd rather get slower performance on my Palm device (which was the only device to experience such cruddy performance) then to risk having some idiot use my connection to download illegal things or worse, hack my system. I may end up dumping the Palm stuff altogether and start using WPA (which the iPAQ can do). It's really a shame that PalmOne hasn't been able to come up with drivers to support WPA (I'm not even asking for 802.11i and AES).

Disable DHCP, Disable Broadcast of ESSID, Client Ip filtering & MAC Address filtering all potentential alternatives to provide some level of security on a modern day WAP as apposed to Wired Equivelant Privacy.

At least thats what I use.