I connected my two laptops - a brand new 3.4ghz Dell with a built in wireless 802.11g card and a 1.4ghz Compaq with a PCMCIA 802.11g card together with Ad Hoc mode and was shocked to find that they were only getting 11mbps... and they were sitting right next to each other!
So, being curious, I looked it up on the net and found this article. I was so disapointed.
See - I want to be able to ad hoc my two laptops so that I can do a remote desktop application and the more bandwidth the better - well, 11mbps works, but 56mbps would have been much better.

If anyone finds some type of solution for this, I would love to hear it. Thanks!

BTW, both my laptops are running Windows XP SP2.

There's no workaround, unfortunately - and vendors are unwilling to guarantee that they exceed the specs.

The only way to actually find out whether faster speeds are supported is to try it.

I just bought a Sitecom 54Mbps(WL-113) wireless network USB adaptor, and discovered that in Ad-hoc mode it won't exceed 11Mbps. I wasted about an hour trying to find out what was 'wrong'. After giving up for tonight thank God I found this article.

I must say I find it extremely annoying that this is the way people have to find out. Basically I wasted about 20 extra dollars buying a 54Mbps card instead of a 11Mbps card... 'cause in ad-hoc mode they perform equally.

This is really very misleading and annoying. I will take it back tomorrow, 'cause 11Mbps is not what I paid for. It's barely sufficient for high speed internet, because usually you don't get more than 40% of that speed out of it (at least in ad-hoc mode...)

I do want to thank you guys for posting this article (specially Ian), 'cause knowing myself I would have wasted a lot more time!!!

Hi, guys !

Here's a trick, though.
I have a DELL P4 3 GHz with a DELL TrueMobile 1300 Wireless (54) and a desktop with SITECOM WL-113 54G.

Here's what I have done :
- plug-in the Sitecom adapter; go to its properties (adapter properties) and in the Advanced tab set the following keys to Enabled : IBSS_G_Mode, IBSS_Pure_G_Mode
- remove the Sitecom adapter
- start the other computer (dell laptop w. DELL TrueMobile 1300) and set the properties of the integrated Wireless adapter: Rate=54; make sure IBSS Mode = Default
- set-up on the laptop a new Ad-Hoc wireless network (54MBit);
- plug-in the Sitecom adapter into the desktop and connect to the Ad-Hoc network

So, in your case, I would try to set the adapters' properties to enforce 54 MBit/Sec.

Also, in my case it only works if I connect the Sitecom to the other one and NOT the other way around. So, try to connect TO Dell.

Good luck,

Sergiu

Hi, I have the sony grt915m notebook with the Lan-Express 802.11g miniPCI wireless adapter.

I want to try the settings you suggested with your Dell on my SONY notebook but I have no network utility for my integrated notebook WLAN. And as far as I know winxp does not allow to set the rate of my integrated WLAN adapter.

"...set the properties of the integrated Wireless adapter: Rate=54; make sure IBSS Mode = Default"

So I can't do that. I can only do it the other way around (setting the speed for the WL-113)

I tried using other utilities (like the one sitecom provides with the WL-113) but no succes.

Any suggestions?

Greetings.

Hi there.

I'm having the same problem here at home. I've got a Toshiba Satellite A65S-1069 with a built-in wi-fi adapter, 54Mbps capable, and I've bought a D-link pci card DWL-G520+ (54Mbps)for my desktop computer.

I've spent my whole weekend looking for a workaround for this speed limitation, until I've found this article...

I wonder if there is any kind of, say, registry tweak or midified firmware for some wi-fi adapters...

cheers

just got the superG netgear stuff - now i find out it goes at 11mbps... to get full 108mbps i need to go buy a $200AUD router...

rant rant rant GRRR

It is more a problem depending the driver developement. Under linux using INTEL IPW2200 and a ralink2500-based MSI-PCIcard I have no problem getting 54MBit Connections stable with 20m distance. It is possible for developers to enable 54Mbit in ad-hoc mode, when the hardware supports g-Standard! Dont know why most dont use it...

Most wireless cards have a setting for rate which is by default set to Use Best Rate. To change this setting, go into device manager -- Right Click on the wireless card -- Properties -- Advanced -- Check if you have this property listed here.. Use the utility that came with the card to get the exact speed of the connection.

Ak

Obviously it's disabled so you have to go out and buy a router as well! It stinks!

I didn't realise I'd kick up such a storm with this. At least you guys haven't been banned from your local computer shop. I took one of my DLINK client dongles back once I'd found out about 11b restrictions, and cited the refund reason as "not fit for purpose", but had to admit defeat in the shop and pay a restocking fee as it "wasn't faulty!". They wouldn't let me buy a router from them after that! Funny thing is...my remaining DLINK client dongle has now stopped working!

Thanks guys.I am a would be tech support engineer and encountered the same problem when i was in training.Your article here has answered some questions i had and thanks a lot again.
Bye.

I have two D-Link WL cards and just spent the entire night trying to get them to work above 11 mps. Then I ran into this article and boy I'm glad. The DWL-G650 PCMCIA and the DWL-G520 PCI are both "Extreme G" rated at 108 mps, but still only 11 using Ad-Hoc :( 11 won't cut it for sound meters remote so I guess I'm out to buy another gigabit router! Keep this going because the technology is here....somebody just needs to get it UP TO SPEED!
Rgds
J

Make sure you update you drivers to the latest!

Check the properties of the the card itself and try changing some of the settings listed there.
I had this problem with a hawking usb adaptor.

I managed to change the settings for the card itself to use 54mb only. Now adhoc connects at this speed as well.

While its not a d-link card, dont give up before checking there.

Hi,

I do have pair 3650&3810 for my laptop and desktop....and feel terribly disapointed as well. There must be some way to do enable g mode. Currently I am looking on some option of making my desktop as AP :) however ad-hoc is so not popular and not many people who knowitall are trying to tweak it :(

Hopefull couple of months ....

I am trying to get the cards working above 11Mbps for over a month and it just wouldn't connect at higher... This really is annoying because actually when you have a wired router and you bridge your wired and wireless NIC you have a cheap AP... 2bad it only works at 11Mbps...
I have a Gigabyte Wireless PCI card and a USR Turbo PCMCIA card... Have tried to manually set the speed but no luck... Any place where updated drivers could be found for this problem?

The manufacturers might add that to their manual, because I can understand that many people have been wasting their time...

Hy Guys, nice forum you got here!
I had the same problem with "Sitecom Wireless Network USB Adapter 54G WL-113 #4". It only connected at 11 mbps! Well, i was pissed of with this so i arrived at this forum and resolved my problem trying the solution given by Erich! Thank´s for that and keep going with this hepfull forum!

I have a Acer TravelMate 4603WLCi and it has 54Mbps in Ad Hoc Mode. The Connection is made between two identical TravelMate (I Have 2 identical TM 4603). But still it has some drawbacks since after some time the connection can go higher or slower in term of Mbps (off course never exceed 54 :) but sometimes when not using it for a long time it goes all the way down reaching the lowest Mbps even while the signal is full, but as the traffic gains the speed would go back all the way up, even to 54 Mbps in heavy traffic).

Excellent thread this, and thanks to it I have managed to get my Ad-Hoc network running at 54Mbs!

I have two PC,s one with a Sitecom 54G WL-115v2 network card, this PC is also connected to my broadband. The other has a Buffalo WLI2-PCI_G54 wireless card.

To get 54G working I did this
On the Sitecom Advanced settings set 'Adhoc Wireless Mode' to be '802.11 B/G Mix' and 'Network Type' to 'Infrastructure'
On the Buffalo Advanced Settings set 'IBSS 54g(tm) Mode' to be '54g - Auto' and 'Rate' to be '54'.

Reconnect and hey presto, 54G.

Obviously this will be different for every card and combination of cards but the message is, make sure your cards are set to force 54G for Ad Hoc networks. If you just leave them to the defaults they will always default to 11b.

I tried the advice from paul above on a DLINK usb dongle (set to b/g mix) and a compaq laptop using broadcom wireless drivers set to 'IBSS 54g(tm) Mode' to be '54g - Auto' and 'Rate' to be '54'.
Currently connected at 54Mbps an loving it....good luck

I tried to apply the solutions you all proposed... I am using Dell Inspiron 1501 with Dell 1390 wireless mini card. They support g. I defined the rate constant in 54 in both machines and used a traffic generator to fill the channel. They indeed have better performance... but they only reach 11 mbps!! When they are working in b, they only reach 6 mbps.
We really have to talk to these people...

I upgraded my 54 Mbps adaptor to a 108 mbps one!!!! but i only get an 11 mbps,wasted loads of time figuring it out, thx for the article. btw, when i had the 54 mbps, my laptop that i connect to my pc said the connection is 54 mbps while the pc said it was 11!!! so i couldn't get anymore, just upgraded to vista and my dlink utility wont work so have to use windows haha.

OK, I also spent HOURS with the on line folks and only got 11Mbps...until I went to my wireless adapter's properties, clicked on configure and selected "use g mode in usb1.1 only" and now I am flying at 54Mbps. I am next gong to try IBSS g and IBSS PureG mode. Why does getting answers have to be so hard?

In my dlink (dwl-520g) i dont have any option to choose wireless mode...! but i have it in my vaio laptop,, i cant connect them when only the laptop is set to 54 .

Thanks for the tips guys

I did a google on IBSS_G_Mode and found this thread

Changed my Belkin USB adaptor to "use g mode in usb1.1 only" - instant speed change

Now leaving well alone.... ;)

Hi guys,

I tried to find from where to change my Belkin Wireless adopter setting to "use g mode in usb 1.1". can any body help

Regards

i bought my dlink DWA-120
around 50$ just for getting speed of 108Mbps and after searching 4 days and nights i figured out hoc-hoc connection is limited to 11Mbps(on my laptop dell xps 1530) 600-750kbps.
not a good point for dlink.
at least sales expert could tell me that. or write that on box.

I have installed an Option GT Fusion+ PCMCIA UMTS/WiFi card on my backup laptop running Ubuntu 7.10 (I want to use it as a sort of internet access point at home).

I used ndiswrapper, a utility that imports WiFi Windows drivers to Ubuntu.
My WiFi card uses common Marvell drivers.

I noticed that the .inf file of my card has a section dedicated to ad-hoc mode.
Before installing the driver I changed the following line:

HKR, Ndi\params\AdhocGMode,default,,"1"

into

HKR, Ndi\params\AdhocGMode,default,,"0"

And I am now able to run an ad-hoc WiFi network at 54Mb/s between Linux and Windows PCs.

I guess this trick is also valid if the card is installed on Windows machines.

So, I would advise to inspect the .inf file before installing any card and check if there is a section dedicated to ad-hoc network mode.

Dan.

My VAIO's lan card (Atheros) shows 54mbps but it really connects at 11mbps in AdHoc, what a scam!, the driver does the same for whatever speed it connects to an AP, shows 54G always, even in low signal conditions.