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Fubar1977

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 30, 2010
885
31
North Yorkshire, UK
Hi

Just curious but when I "park" my MBP at my desk I connect it to my network using ethernet as my home office is some distance from the router making wi-fi too slow.
In iStat pro it shows ethernet and airport are connected and both show data transfer, usually with ethernet moving much more data.

They both obviously have separate internal ip addresses so my question is, is the MBP using BOTH connections to the router at the same time?
Or would it be better/no different to switch off airport while on ethernet?

My Win7 laptop will only connect using ethernet if I switch off the wi-fi physically on the PC, it always gives priority to the wi-fi.
 
I certainly don't think it would hurt performance; if it ain't broke, don't fix it - if you start to get performance issues, then you can start fiddling with it.
 
By default Mac OS X gives priority to a wired Ethernet connection. The Airport is kept as a backup. The data you see going through the Airport connection is the Macbook Pro keeping the Airport connection active, nothing more.
 
By default Mac OS X gives priority to a wired Ethernet connection. The Airport is kept as a backup. The data you see going through the Airport connection is the Macbook Pro keeping the Airport connection active, nothing more.

That was my thought too, Thanks you guys are fast on MR :D
 
both Mac os X and Win 7 are multihoming. This means that they support multiple simultaneous connections. Though if the wifi is slower and has more overhead due to WPA/WEP etc more data will get transferred by the hardwired connection.
My Win 7 machine that I am typing thsi on is connected to both my wired and wireless. My Mac which is buys right now is also.
WinXp cant do this, it can only bridge or share connections.
 
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