Impossibly slow wi-fi on a ThinkPad T420

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amenex
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Joined: 01/03/2015

Until about as month ago, my ThinkPad T420 worked great under Trisquel 7 using a ThinkPenguin USB wireless adapter, but now it regularly connects at 6Mb/s (that's mega_bits_ per second) and frequently disconnects. This morning the process of accessing webmail and then sending a single email (admittedly while looking up a couple of documents for reference) consumed two hours. Several times the system could not find my ISP and I couldn't even ping the ISP's domain.

By comparison, when I run the same laptop with Windows 7, the connection speed is a hundred times faster, albeit with the built-in wireless hardware.

How can I diagnose this problem ? Are there settings somewhere that can be tweaked ?

tomlukeywood
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Joined: 12/05/2014

just from personal experience when i got the thinkpenguin usb wifi card (the small black one)

it was doing the same thing on my old dell laptop from 2001

i then read that i do-sent work well with some old computers

and i got the big white one as seen here(https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-g-usb-adapter)

and it worked perfectly

but you should use thinkpenguins support

amenex
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Joined: 01/03/2015

Range may be an issue, as they all give the same range of Mb/s:

AR9271
802.11g: 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, 54Mbps

Realtek RTL8187B
802.11g: 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, 54Mbps

TPE-N150USBL (long range version of AR9271)
802.11g: UP to 54Mbps

My AR9271 connects at 6Mb/s most of the time but reaches 52Mb/s on occasion.

Kinda like the inverse of blood pressure: The bigger the hurry, the lower the Mb/s.

amenex
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Joined: 01/03/2015

Today I'm in no hurry, and wi-fi is fast again (39 Mb/s & 26 Mb/s).