MacBook Air 2010 AirPort 802.11n speed

J400uk said:

What sort of speeds should the 802.11n chipset in the new MBA achieve?

I am finding that mine is only connecting to my access point at 65 mbps, this seems rather slow as I've got a sony vaio here which is connecting at 150 mbps. Is anyone else having similar issues?

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"only" 65 mbps....give be a break, that is FAST. Almost as fast as straight 10/100 Ethernet. You could max out any cable or FIOS with that speed right there...even a T3.

Unless you are transferring like HDx6, you will be fine with those speeds. Your Internet provider doesn't even reach half those speeds, unless you are paying for T1/T3...

I can see that being a problem if you were streaming multiple devices simultaneously, but you would have a NAS or some other form of server in your house for that -- and hardwired...

J400uk said:

What sort of speeds should the 802.11n chipset in the new MBA achieve?

I am finding that mine is only connecting to my access point at 65 mbps, this seems rather slow as I've got a sony vaio here which is connecting at 150 mbps. Is anyone else having similar issues?

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Anything over 10 MBPS is pretty fast for wireless. Are you sure about the 65 mbps? 150 mbps is unheard of.

Notice the same here, even in the same room as the router the max is 104, vs 150-300 on other wireless devices. The iPad is similar in slower reported connections.

As others mentioned probably not a big deal in common use,
but I dont see why Apple's wireless cant connect as fast as others?

WardC said:

"only" 65 mbps....give be a break, that is FAST. Almost as fast as straight 10/100 Ethernet. You could max out any cable or FIOS with that speed right there...even a T3.

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Can't max out my home internet.

I have 100/15 from Comcast.

jfulcher said:

Can't max out my home internet.

I have 100/15 from Comcast.

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They offer such a thing?

WardC said:

They offer such a thing?

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Yeah - it's 100/15 in some markets, 105/10 in some. It's only in about 20% of the markets right now. It's not cheap though. Their 50/10 is in most of their markets though. When I had that I would average ~6-7MB/s down.

I think the issue here is LAN speed, not WAN speed.

I am seeing very slow speeds on my Wireless N router for LAN transfers. It should do 300Mbps theoretically. For doing network installs of software, I've found everything to be too slow on the Air. Luckily, I will be done with installs in a few days

I haven't tried HD video over wireless, but I'm worried already

nomar383 said:

I think the issue here is LAN speed, not WAN speed.

I am seeing very slow speeds on my Wireless N router for LAN transfers. It should do 300Mbps theoretically. For doing network installs of software, I've found everything to be too slow on the Air. Luckily, I will be done with installs in a few days

I haven't tried HD video over wireless, but I'm worried already

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Theoretically it can get that speed. Realistically in the real world wifi never comes close to that speed. I remember getting one of the best 802.11g routers back in the day and only being able to sustain about 20-25Mb/s out of the 54 Mb/s it was rated to.

A full bluray stream is only 5-6 Megabytes/sec. i.e. about 50-60Mbits/sec You have nothing to worry about with HD unless you are more than a room away. Streaming HD from any other source would be even less.

jfulcher said:

Theoretically it can get that speed. Realistically in the real world wifi never comes close to that speed. I remember getting one of the best 802.11g routers back in the day and only being able to sustain about 20-25Mb/s out of the 54 Mb/s it was rated to.

A full bluray stream is only 5-6 Megabytes/sec. i.e. about 50-60Mbits/sec You have nothing to worry about with HD unless you are more than a room away. Streaming HD from any other source would be even less.

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My wireless N router is a POS anyway. My DD-WRT Linksys wireless G router seems more reliable...

Not having Ethernet is a bummer for the moment

I thought my cable is pretty fast. I get about 27 - 28MBit/sec which averages out to about 1.1MB - 1.2MB/sec download speed. I didn't even know anything existed faster for the consumer than the Verizon FIOS speed which is roughly 50MBit. I thought there was a limit on how fast cable speeds could go and I thought T3 would always be faster.

How do you test your N speeds?

Thanks, I have some interest in doing this. I have Uverse 24Meg down, 3 up w/ and airport extreme 5ghz. Would love some tips. thanks all...

tigres said:

How do you test your N speeds?

Thanks, I have some interest in doing this. I have Uverse 24Meg down, 3 up w/ and airport extreme 5ghz. Would love some tips. thanks all...

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I just pick a big file from one of my other computers and transfer it over the network. Not exactly a scientific test when I do it haha

tigres said:

How do you test your N speeds?

Thanks, I have some interest in doing this. I have Uverse 24Meg down, 3 up w/ and airport extreme 5ghz. Would love some tips. thanks all...

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My router has a wireless info screen that shows the connected devices and connection speed...

used to have a fractional t1, but it was only at 1.5 mbps (symmetric). so, simply saying a "t1 line" is as meaningless as saying "cable" or "DSL". comcast, time warner, cox, and cablevision all offer ultra-fast 100mbps or higher cable connections to the home.

but again, this is unrelated to the MBA's wireless issues... which don't connect at true N speeds. a notebook with a 3 stream antenna connected to a 3 stream router can connect at 450mbps. it is possible, right now, to buy both of those things, yet the air can't even hit 150. sad, really.

vm7118 said:

used to have a fractional t1, but it was only at 1.5 mbps (symmetric). so, simply saying a "t1 line" is as meaningless as saying "cable" or "DSL". comcast, time warner, cox, and cablevision all offer ultra-fast 100mbps or higher cable connections to the home...

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You're totally right.

According to this T1 can carry up to 1.5Mbps and T3 can carry 43Mbps:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question372.htm

I think some people still throw around "T1" like T1 is some magical super-fast connection. My FIOS connection back in CA can do 50Mbps if my family wanted to pay for it.

J400uk said:

I just don't understand why Apple have crippled the wireless on the MBA. As I say I have this and the vaio in front of me, the Sony is showing as connected at 150 Mbps and the MacBook at 65 Mbps, seems totally stupid. I'd expect better from a machine costing so much, they shouldn't advertise it as 802.11n if it's incapable of even connecting at 802.11n speeds!

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What do you use Wireless N for in your environment?

J400uk said:

connection to a NAS, so the speed matters!

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Okay, I can feel your pain there for sure

nomar383 said:

I just pick a big file from one of my other computers and transfer it over the network. Not exactly a scientific test when I do it haha

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OSMac said:

My router has a wireless info screen that shows the connected devices and connection speed...

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Thanks for the input.

WardC said:

I thought my cable is pretty fast. I get about 27 - 28MBit/sec which averages out to about 1.1MB - 1.2MB/sec download speed. I didn't even know anything existed faster for the consumer than the Verizon FIOS speed which is roughly 50MBit. I thought there was a limit on how fast cable speeds could go and I thought T3 would always be faster.

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With the new Docsis 3.0 standard you can go faster than 100Mbit even.

27-28Mbit/sec should average close to 2.5-3MB/s too if you have a good provider.