Hello! I bought a new 2013 MBA 13" yesterday, and own a airport extreme 5th generation. I took for granted that the Macbook air would support triple band 802.11N, but I can only get 300mbit connection to my router. Am I doing something wrong, or does the new MBA not have triple antenna?
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Does the 2013 MBA support 450mbit 802.11N?
- Thread starter wressus
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Nope only MBP have 3x3 wifi antenna configuration, so you're limited to 300mbit max on straight Wireless N
ISee.
Well OP don't get too excited as I found out more often that not the number quoted is nowhere near what u get in real life.
I'm confused i thought wifi-ac did 1300Mbps at 80mhz and wifi-n did 450Mbps at 40mhz ?
At least when reading apples page on the AX... And the MBA 2013 should be capable of hitting these speed targets (providing no obstacles and short distances etc)
That can only be achieve if the adapter has 3 antenna plugs and supports 3T3R MIMO streams. Note that per each antenna/stream, Wireless-N can carry 150Mbps on 64-QAM, 40 MHz channel connection while AC can do 433.3 Mbps on 80MHz channel width, 256-QAM. That's where the claim 3x the N speed comes.
If you looked at the teardown of the 2013 MBA, you'll see that there are only 2 antenna connections and the Broadcom Wi-Fi Adapter can only do 2T2R streams which effectively results to 866 Mbps connection.
On the same token, the maximum link speed on Wireless-N with 2T2R streams is 300Mbps.
Some of the 3T3R MIMO Wireless-AC adapters that can do 1.3 Gbps are only found on Desktop PCI-E x1 ports
Thanks! I hadn't realised this, perhaps i didnt read it properly / or i didnt understand but, it should really be as transparent as your post to explain the true speeds you could achieve.