Got MBA back, noticed something.

After being without my Air for months, it's now back with it's daddy. Never been so happy. Needed repairs which I couldn't afford for a while (turns out it was covered by warranty anyway, bloody fool that I am).

Anyway, I've noticed that my wifi signal is now kick ass. The repair was a new logic board, which I assume would also mean a new wifi antenna. I never used to be able to connect to my own wifi in my bedroom, because it was three floors away from the router. But now, I'm getting full bar connectivity and kick ass speeds (the Internet is normally slow as hell for everyone else at the house).

I'm just wondering how could this happen? I've checked I haven't accidentally connected to someone else's network and it's all legit. How could the quality of signal change like that between logic boards? Because for a cheap G router 3 floors away I would assume that the rubbish signal I was getting before was accurate.

tldr How the hell am I connecting to a cheap old Netgear router three floors away and getting excellent connectivity and speeds? And why does the quality of wifi antenna between different MBA logic boards change so much?

Yeah I'm not questioning it, it's fantastic.

The old antenna was pretty good though, so I don't accept it was faulty. I always got better signal than my friends with it, then I moved to this house and I just couldn't get a signal because of the distance.

But this new antenna is a beast.

What's even stranger is whilst everyone else moans about the Internet speed (disregarding wifi connectivity for a minute), there's me flying away. I downloaded the couple of gigs of OS updates that have been released since I last used the laptop and it was done in maybe 30 minutes. Which for a wifi router used by 6 other people, on a known rubbish connection, in England where broadband is pretty average anyway, is fantastic.

I'm happy anyway. Maybe it's like some sort of karma because I had to put up with Windows for so long, now I'm being rewarded.

throAU said:

It may not have been the logic board, it could have simply been that one of the antennas was faulty or not plugged in before.

The new machines have MULTIPLE wifi antennas.... Could also be firmware related - your new board may have updated firmware.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that, noted.