I get a VERY steady 1.06MB/sec transfer rate when in 2.4GHz -n w/ -g compatability mode (130Mb/sec connection between MBP & AEBS)... I get ~1.10MB/sec transfer rate when in 5GHz mode )300Mb/sec connection from MBP to AEBS)... my question is... why such a minimal increase?? Both should be connecting a LOT faster than what they are... why is this?? I have a direct line of sight and about 3ft distance when in my office and about 20ft distance when in my living room. I dont get it. I should see closer to 16.25 MB/sec when in 2.4 mode & 37.5 when in 5GHz mode!! Any ideas on how to speed things up??
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5GHz no faster than 2.4 with the AEBS??????
- Thread starter ~J~
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The 5 GHz spectrum is only less crowded when compared to the 2.4 GHz one fighting with other devices.
Another MBP and/or a HD connected to the AEBS via USB2... which should be 480Mb/sec (I know, I know... its all theoretical... but I see ~300Mb/sec w/USB all the time...)
So what gives??
Yes sir. All firmware & software updates are installed as soon as they come out. I've even reset the AEBS and rebuilt my network from scratch... same result. This is definitely not how an -n network should be running and its really frustrating as I do large file transfers (1-6GB) to the wireless disk almost on a daily basis right now...
Ok... this is officially driving me crazy. Just for kicks and giggles, I started a large file transfer (1.5GB) from an old PowerBook G4 (15" 1.5GHz) which is connected to the -g side of my network... it is transferring at 1.67MB/sec!!! Yeah, its only slightly faster than my MBP connected at 5GHz/300Mb... but its out-performing a MUCH more powerful system!!!! HOW???!!!
The low-speed processor in the router has to translate from the network file protocol (encapsulated in ethernet frames) into whatever the disk's format is, encapsulated in USB frames (which are notoriously processing intensive). If you look around the forum those are relatively normal rates to the USB disk on the Airport... it's not exactly server-class hardware in there. It's possible that the transfer was slightly faster from the older hardware because it was having to do less work to decode the older, simpler wireless format, leaving more processing power to encode to USB.
Also be sure not to get your megabits and megabytes confused. Megabytes are at least 8 times bigger than megabits (8.4 times in the worst case.. if you consider a kilobyte to be 1024 bytes and a megabyte to be 1024 kilobytes).
A higher carrier frequency does not mean faster transfer rate... The only benefit IIRC is that the 5GHz spectrum isn't as crowded as the 2.4GHz, yielding higher robustness. The downside of 5GHz is that it suffers higher attenuation per unit distance (less range).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_capacity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(signal_processing)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_capacity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(signal_processing)
You see 300Mbit (37.5MB/s) on USB2? With what? The best I can get consistently with USB2 drives is about 24MB/s. 480Mbit signal rate does not equal 480Mbit transfer rate.
With respect to AEBS, I was getting 4-7MB/s last night when writing to and reading from a USB drive connected to the AEBS, and more when reading from my file server in the garage. I got a little bit better speed when using 5GHz vs 2.4. And got better speeds when using higher multicast rate (but at the expense of reduced range). My AEBS is upstairs across the house, not 3 feet away. You should be seeing better numbers.
The big deal is what are you testing with and connecting to in order to get those measurements?
One other thing: DO you have the newer Gigabit Ethernet model, or the older Wireless-N with 10/100 Ethernet? If the latter, you have a 100Mbit bottleneck, and with a single file transfer you can expect to get about 6-8 MB/s (50+% efficiency of the full 100Mbit link).
(edited later)
Sorry, you are using a USB drive. Never mind.
(edited later)
Sorry, you are using a USB drive. Never mind.
I have to correct my earlier statement. With ~reads~ from my external USB drive, I am seeing about 32MB/s for large file transfers.