WiFi extremely slow, help?

[Jacob]

I live in a house with my friend owned by his parents. We just got comcast the other day, the best package they offer. I don't know what exact package we got since his dad signed up for the service. But anyways, the wifi signal constantly disconnects from our devices. I did a few speed tests and I only get about 1.7 Mbps download speed in my room right around the corner from the router and an upload speed of about 1.3 Mbps. I did another speed test sitting next to the router and got download speeds and upload speeds of 1.8 and 1.9 Mbps respectively. Then I plugged my laptop into the router via cat5 cable/ ethernet and produced download and upload speeds of about 58 and 10 Mbps respectively. I understand a hardwired connection will produce the fastest speed possible and I've been told routers don't really affect speed, but I don't understand why there is such huge difference, even when im sitting right in front of the router. Why is this so, and is there any way I can increase the wireless speed knowing theres potential for faster speeds? I have a hard time believing 1.7 Mbps download speeds are the fastest we can get.

Side note: the router we have is the one comcast gave us. I know multiple people have had to buy better routers than the ones provided by their cable companies.

[Kelly]

I don't know how old that router is, but it sounds old. The router does make a difference. I had a router that was 5 years old. They laughed at me in Best Buy when I told them that. I did get a new one for about 80 bucks. Made a huge difference.
Also remember, the speed will be affected by how many devices are connecting to the internet. And just because someone isn't using a computer, if it's on and a browser is open, this can affect.

Good luck

[theradioham]

Check for competing signals with http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/ (free).

It will show if your channel is overlapping others, or is co-channel with many strong signals.

Completely clear is best, same channel as the weakest is second best, while overlapping (closer than 4) is worst.
If on the SAME channels as others, then they will co-operate to minimize interference, while if overlapping, attempts by both to transmit at once may result in interference and neither getting through.

If you can find a better channel, it may improve things - NB. Inssider cannot detect non-Wifi signals, so it's possible that the channel that LOOKS clear may be plagued by terrible non-Wifi interference, such as a video sender

[rowlfe]

Wireless connections are nothing more than a party line. Wireless suffers from "the party line effect". The more people ON the line, the slower EVERYONE goes. How many other networks are in your list? The more users, the more you compete for air time. It is NO surprise to me that you encountered a wide variation between wireless and hard wire. How many of your neighbors are using wireless? I have 5 wireless networks that I can hear, and each has a pair of transmitters and only ONE can transmit at a time without interference. If two (or more) try to transmit at the same time, no one gets through and have to resend. Which is why years ago, I dumped wireless for hard wire. It simply was not worth the convenience of not having a wire because of the slowdown caused by the neighbors.