I think someone is sucking my bandwidth away.

I live in a 150 apartment complex. My internet is painfully slow and I am on Comcast Premium. I have a Linksys E1500 wireless router and my adapter is a PowerLink Ultra High Power 11b/g/n. I have noticed within the last week my download speeds and page loads are crap.

I can see 29 other networks on my Microsoft wireless connection tab. There are lots of other wireless networks in my vicinity. It maybe that one of them has hacked my network.

My wireless router is encrypted with WPA2-PSK

Any thoughts?

Isn't there a network sniffer prog called netshark or something like that which shows me IPS that are using my network?

Thanks fellas.

Change the password on the router and for the wireless. Make it very long and completely random. Make sure you are using WPA2 as the encryption or disable wireless completely if you don't use it.

You could use WireShark to see traffic, but you won't be able to do much with it.

krag said:

I can see 29 other networks on my Microsoft wireless connection tab. There are lots of other wireless networks in my vicinity.

Click to expand...

Could be due to so much RF activiy in your near vicinity? I'm not up to speed on N, but I know B/G has a limited # of "Channels", and once all channels are allocated, things start to go downhill quick.

I do second all of Thiddy's recommendations - but it is unlikely that someone hacked your WPA2 unless your PW was very easy to guess IMO. In addition to Thiddy's recommendation of making a long/random WPA2 PW along with the Router's Admin PW (2 different PW's), make sure "Wireless Administration" or whatever it is called on your router is disabled (prevents people from logging into the router over WiFi / then if you need to get into your router, use an Ethernet Cable to quickly make the changes).

also check your signal levels, if the wireLESS can negotiate different speeds at different signal levels, then that is what i would check first .

certannly if someone hopped onto your router it would be easiest to check if they got a "local" IP address? even with security, you should be able to lock down a "range" of local addresses to 1 or 2. without them aquiring an address, they cant very well connect at all even with passords could it be simpler?
but then neither could you if you changed something or added, so you would have to remember it was locked down.

What do you use as your main ISP Firewall/Router? Most will be able to give you usage specifics (especially DDWrt) and give you hints to where the issue is coming from.

I would check your cable modem also and make sure the signal/noise ratio is good also.

If you got Docsis 3 your downstream should be between -10~10dBmv and upstream should be around 50dBmv

You can get to your cable modem's page by going to http://192.168.100.1/ most likely.

I would enable the MAC filtering address and only allow your PCs and devices on wi-fi, and maybe don't broadcast your SSID.

If someone is piggy backing on your bandwith, you should see some improvement.

Wicked_Pixie said:

I would enable the MAC filtering address and only allow your PCs and devices on wi-fi, and maybe don't broadcast your SSID.

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For someone who knows what they are doing, this is going to do absolutely nothing to help security. It isn't even worth the trouble of setting up.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/the-six-dumbest-ways-to-secure-a-wireless-lan/43

Yep. An actively broadcast SSID isn't needed to connect. A strong WPA2 PW and a good router admin PW is about as hard as you need to be IMO...

Others mentioned you can check the currently connected PC's from the router's setup page. That's probably the first place I'd look. But as I hinted at earlier, I doubt your WPA2 PW has been hacked unless you used a very simple PW.

With 29 other wireless networks in-range as you reported earlier, you are likely getting all kinds of cross-talk and other radios "stepping on" your router's radio across the whole spectrum. Just checked "the book of knowledge", and 802.11n only has 13 available "primary channels" - so I could see this being a real possibility...

Thanks for the replies fellas. I am in my router IP panels now am going to make a ridulously long password. The current one has 8 characters. And I will also change the password on my wifi adapter too. I will check back in and give a report.

Do you see anyone else connected in your router's WiFi DHCP client listings?

Randyman... said:

Do you see anyone else connected in your router's WiFi DHCP client listings?

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Is this what you are talking about?

Yep - Any other PC's that are connected to your router (Wired or WiFi) would be listed in the top section (where it shows "Kraig-PC").

Did you already change your WiFi PW and admin PW? How are your speeds now? I'm still leaning towards RF congestion in your area - but anything is possible (I'm leaning towards RF interference, or other hardware type issues over peple hacking your WPA2 password and stealing your bandwidth)....

Does that router have a 5GHz band? I know the E2000 does, so that might be something worth looking in to. It's lower ping, but shorter range. Most people don't use 5GHz, but it's doubtful that you'd have too many 5GHz signals actually getting into your apartment to cause issues.

Also, do you have a Cordless phone on the 2.4GHz band? When i was first getting WiFi set up, we had to get a new phone. The receiver was right next to the router, and every time someone was on the phone, it completely dropped out, and the voice quality on the phone was horrid.

Randyman... said:

Yep - Any other PC's that are connected to your router (Wired or WiFi) would be listed in the top section (where it shows "Kraig-PC").

Did you already change your WiFi PW and admin PW? How are your speeds now? I'm still leaning towards RF congestion in your area - but anything is possible (I'm leaning towards RF interference, or other hardware type issues over peple hacking your WPA2 password and stealing your bandwidth)....

Click to expand...

Yes, that was after I changed my logins to a 13 character passphrase. Right now it seems fine, but last after the change I still had sloooow speeds. It might just be congestion and there is a boatload of signals here. When I use the proprietary wifi adapter software (using microshaft right now) I got about 30% more networks listed.

*edit...now there are 38 networks listed

CompuTamer said:

Does that router have a 5GHz band? I know the E2000 does, so that might be something worth looking in to. It's lower ping, but shorter range. Most people don't use 5GHz, but it's doubtful that you'd have too many 5GHz signals actually getting into your apartment to cause issues.

Also, do you have a Cordless phone on the 2.4GHz band? When i was first getting WiFi set up, we had to get a new phone. The receiver was right next to the router, and every time someone was on the phone, it completely dropped out, and the voice quality on the phone was horrid.

Click to expand...

I just looked on the box and it is 2.4ghz. I remember having the E1500 & the E2000 routers in each hand trying to decide which one I should buy and I definately remember the 5ghz feature on the E2000, I chose the cheaper one thinking...I will never really need 5ghz bandwidth. Sheeeesh

5ghz is the frequency the device is transmitting on.It has nothing to do with bandwith.Almost all of the new cordless phones nowadays are at least transmitting in the 5ghz range and higher.
It's a really short signal wave that penetrates walls and other objects easier than lower frequencies like the older 900mhz phones for example.So in a building like yours if you have a lot of newer phones intermodulation or interference is possible.Even 2.4ghz is in the microwave band and penetrates walls and floors easily so you're pretty much being bombarded by other people's signals.
The thing is these devices transmit with very low wattage so for another router or phone outside your apartment to cause intermod to me sounds unlikely because your device's signal would easily overpower them because of proximity.
A surge protector with a line filter built in might help if that is indeed the problem.Most brand name surge protectors have capacitors and or terroidal coils in them to prevent radio interference from entering the power suply of the devices plugged into the strip but that's only one entry point for rf interference covered.

Btw,check out this link for "perfect passwords" while your at it.

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

I have a rainmeter skin which always shows my ip and any traffic in or out on my desktop. Just don't do anything and watch it. If there's activity, then you know and any good fw like private will always log by default. Glad I don't have all that noise around me. I use password safe for all my passes as well as phone numbers. Works in wine great and I typically now use a very random 15 character one.

Strange eh. Too many separate networks using separate devices. Could that actually cause problems other than too much noise in the environment?
Sounds like a round robin is in order. God knows how all those cables are laid.

Yeah, I know about transmitting spectrum. I just was not sure I would need that particular part of it but looks like now I do. TBH, since I changed the password I have not had any slow downs like I had last week. I even bought a different wifi adapter from newegg which came today. I wanted to see if that made a difference also but it seems now that the point is moot.

There are 6 other networks that have 4 full bars listed in the MS Wireless Network Connection list. I am sure I am being bombarded with RF radiation as I type this out. LOL

Also Wireshark will show local traffic in capture mode so if you see any other local ip addresses besides your own even if you can't understand what thery're doing,you know what's wrong.I think they renamed the software now though.
GL I think your ok now though.

Thank you to all that have commented in this thread. This is one of the many reasons why OCF has done so well for so many years. Your very knowledgeable comments and experience have lead to a solution. The membership here had shined through once again!