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Wifi Speed

DJLC

DJLC

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 17, 2005
965
412
North Carolina
I work at a charter middle school with a 1-to-1 MacBook initiative. Over the summer we got 200 shiny new MacBook Airs! (The newest w/ Magsafe 2. And don't get me started on the packaging -- it was absolutely awful.)

I've noticed that the Airs are only reporting a wireless speed of 144Mbps in Network Utility. However, others Macs report 300Mbps -- in particular our older mid-'09 white MacBooks and iMacs. All of them are running 10.7.4.

Does anyone have any clue why the new Macs are reporting slower speeds? We have a big fancy Xirrus access point which is operating on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. I'm wondering if maybe it's an issue in the MacBook image? I've already done my due diligence kicking older / crappier wireless devices off.
 
In network utility my 2012 MBA shows 54 Mbit/s for WiFi.

So that's faster than yours...

Anyway - what's the fuss? I can stream 1080p on this. I don't see what you'd be doing in a school that requires a superfast network. I think students can wait a microsecond more for their word documents to download.
 
Glockron said:
In network utility my 2012 MBA shows 54 Mbit/s for WiFi.

So that's faster than yours...

Anyway - what's the fuss? I can stream 1080p on this. I don't see what you'd be doing in a school that requires a superfast network. I think students can wait a microsecond more for their word documents to download.
Click to expand...

That's probably because you have an 802.11g router...
 
DJLC said:
I work at a charter middle school with a 1-to-1 MacBook initiative. Over the summer we got 200 shiny new MacBook Airs! (The newest w/ Magsafe 2. And don't get me started on the packaging -- it was absolutely awful.)

I've noticed that the Airs are only reporting a wireless speed of 144Mbps in Network Utility. However, others Macs report 300Mbps -- in particular our older mid-'09 white MacBooks and iMacs. All of them are running 10.7.4.

Does anyone have any clue why the new Macs are reporting slower speeds? We have a big fancy Xirrus access point which is operating on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. I'm wondering if maybe it's an issue in the MacBook image? I've already done my due diligence kicking older / crappier wireless devices off.
Click to expand...

You may be preferentially connecting to the 2.4GHz band if the signal is stronger, which I believe tops out at 144mbps. The 5.0GHz band actually has wider channels (40 MHz vs. 20 MHz), which allows for more throughput and up to 300 Mbps transfer.
 
Mike in Kansas said:
You may be preferentially connecting to the 2.4GHz band if the signal is stronger, which I believe tops out at 144mbps. The 5.0GHz band actually has wider channels (40 MHz vs. 20 MHz), which allows for more throughput and up to 300 Mbps transfer.
Click to expand...

This seems likely. My thought was that more bandwidth = more reliable speed for everyone. The specific issue I was hoping to address involves our crappy CrossOver-based test taking app. Many students were having issues with it freezing partway through a test; perhaps if it had double the bandwidth available, the problem would be less widespread. When you have 200-some kids hitting the same share with garbage software, it'd seem to me that you'd want as much throughput as you can get.

It seems pretty fickle. Some MacBooks will randomly get 300Mbps, and even randomly swap between having 144 and 300. Maybe I just need to wait until it's time to replace the WAP. At this point it's only a year or so old, so upgrades aren't going to happen in the near future.

Mrbobb said:
Exactly.

Just make sure the kids don't download any 3D porn. :D

I'd be more worry than a single person doing torrent and monopolizing the whole bandwidth.
Click to expand...
Possible! I did actually bust a kid last week for having uTorrent and Steam on his MacBook. He booted into single user mode and copied them into the Applications folder so the managed preferences allowed them to run.
 
Last edited:
DJLC said:
Possible! I did actually bust a kid last week for having uTorrent and Steam on his MacBook. He booted into single user mode and copied them into the Applications folder so the managed preferences allowed them to run.
Click to expand...

Smart kid. :cool:
 
jbzcar said:
Smart kid. :cool:
Click to expand...

the problem with America is that we bust kids like that instead of pointing their smarts in the right direction. I remember as a kid getting in trouble for a similar issue, and i so distinctly remember my dad picking me up from the principals office and telling me how awesome it was that i was able to figure out the computers like that and asking if i wanted a computer of my own.
 
mankar4 said:
the problem with America is that we bust kids like that instead of pointing their smarts in the right direction. I remember as a kid getting in trouble for a similar issue, and i so distinctly remember my dad picking me up from the principals office and telling me how awesome it was that i was able to figure out the computers like that and asking if i wanted a computer of my own.
Click to expand...

Exactly, if I had caught the kid I've have given him a job/internship and encouraged him to learn more.
 
To be fair, he didn't actually get in any trouble. I quietly mentioned to him after the principal had left that all he had to do was not run the apps at school next time. If we can't see them open, we'll never know.
 
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