Ridiculous wi-fi issues on 2013 MBA

[SoundChaos]

I was excited to use the new AC wireless feature on my macbook air after being stuck with nothing but wireless G for so long...

At first, with my old dsl modem/router which maxed out at g tech, my MBA was getting a ping of 180-190ms, with dragging browsing speeds, but the range was ok. My old 2009 macbook air performed much better online, with pings of 70-80ms with speedtest.net. I assumed it was just the old G tech causing the issue, so I upgraded to a new dual band AC router, and now my old 2009 mbp is getting 300Mb/s network transfer speeds, consistent 74 ping, connects seamlessly to the 5ghz and 2.4ghz band, and faster than ever overall. My new MBA however... caps at 144Mb/s rate at 2.4ghz, and its ping is just as bad as it was on the G router. It shows as 867Mb/s in network utility on the 5ghz, but the internet is simply too slow to use, it wont complete a speedtest, and wont browse anything but google.com. Even my brothers 2008 non unibody macbook pro connects to the 5ghz band on this router and works just fine, but by macbook air will not even work on anything but the 2.4ghz. (all testing is done in the same room as the router)

EDIT: My Lenovo Y580 laptop that has a crappy single band intel wireless card works better on the 2.4ghz than my MBA

 

[SpoekGTi]

Tried changing channels and frequencies and other things in the router?

Most routers can broadcast at 2.4 and 5ghz by now, but in that range there are lots of other mhz bands you can put the router on. Some are configged to send out only at channel 7 or 1 but you can put it on 2.4Ghz and then choose from 1 to 13 mostly. Same goes for the 5ghz band.

Then there is and option to make it choose 20 or 40Mhz bands for some features and normally it works when using the default (automatically) but you might get better performance when choosing either 20 or 40mhz.

Even so your old MBP may work better 74ms is still friggin high im getting connected to the 2.4Ghz network ping of no more then 3ms inside my network and pinging a website will give me around 17ms

Im guessing its a setting in your router.

And you do realize that the AC standard isn't there yet, yes the devices support or broadcast an AC signal but it's like 3, 4 years ago with the N devices, it's a draft variation, there isn't anything official yet, i reckon it's better to pay a bit more for a decent quality N router now then to get yourself an AC (draft) one.

I attached screenshots of my wireless networks for the explanation of the Channels bit.

As you can see i'm connected on the N variation on 5Ghz or 2,4Ghz but connections speeds are 54 on 5Ghz and 52 on 2.4Ghz and i checked my networkutility for my actual connections speeds, my 2.4Ghz connections max on 144Mbit and the 5Ghz gets 300Mbit and in either case the ACTUAL transfer speeds are on normal use around the 54Mbit, which is correct because i can max out my internet connection which is 50Mbit on my WiFi. Transfer speeds may vary when chaning channels also. Most of the time i get round 6 or 7 MB/s on copying files.

The channels are different on 2.4Ghz im on channel 8 and on 5Ghz im on 36. And those values are mostly set up as automatically but you can get them on manual, and you have to tried which settings work best.

And yes routers are mostly plug and play, but that bit is not working for wireless devices (got nothing to plug right) it needs work to get it setup right.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

Just get an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule and get proper speeds.

 

[TC25]

Just get an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule and get proper speeds.

Since an Airport Extreme is using the same 802.11ac draft standard, why would it make a difference from any other 802.11ac wifi ap?

 

[SpoekGTi]

Just get an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule and get proper speeds.

Switching to a AE or TC will not magically resolve his problem.

 

[mcotter]

Just got my 2013 MBA and honestly the wifi speeds seem blazing compared to my old laptop. Haven't tested the actual speed and latency yet so I can't give you any concrete numbers but it's very quick.