iPhone 4 and wireless router

[Frenchjay]

Today I had my Internet upgraded to 50mb and also got a wireless n router supplied with the installation from virgin media. The problem is I can't seem to get a good speed on my iphone when using wifi. It hovers between 10-18 mb even though it is a 50mb package.

Here is what I can remember from the router settings

Security is wep aes

Band is 2.4ghz

Channel is set to auto detect

Even when close to the router it only gets 20-24mb and not above that!
Is there anything I can change or anything I have set up wrong? I can provide more info from the router settings if needed! And just fyi the last router i had was a g and I got the full amount of speed from the mb package I had!!

Thanks.

 

[Interstella5555]

Today I had my Internet upgraded to 50mb and also got a wireless n router supplied with the installation from virgin media. The problem is I can't seem to get a good speed on my iphone when using wifi. It hovers between 10-18 mb even though it is a 50mb package.

Here is what I can remember from the router settings

Security is wep aes

Band is 2.4ghz

Channel is set to auto detect

Even when close to the router it only gets 20-24mb and not above that!
Is there anything I can change or anything I have set up wrong? I can provide more info from the router settings if needed! And just fyi the last router i had was a g and I got the full amount of speed from the mb package I had!!

Thanks.

first thing I would do is get a scanner (on Windows of OS X, whichever you're on) that will tell you the channels of all the other wireless networks around you. It's not always easy, but it's best to have at least 2 channels separating you and other networks around you. Also, speed is largely dependent on time of day and how many people are sharing the node you're on, so may want to give them a call and see if there's a problem with the service provider. If not, I'm not sure, may want to take it in or forget the network and rejoin.

*Edit - Also, the 4 can only do 2.4GHz on n, which would make interference a lot easier.

 

[apmorency]

Are you talking about speed of internet traffic to & from your phone? The router?

You'll probably never see those speeds to & from your phone.

Read your ISP's fine print. The data transfer speeds are theoretical under the best of conditions and are mean to be from your home to the isp only. Beyond / outside of their networks they have no control over internet traffic.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Your internet connection is 50MB/s not your WiFi. 802.11n is typically 144Mb/s or 300Mb/s (although it can go up to 600Mb/s using 4x40 channels -- nothing support this at this time if I'm not mistaken).

Note, Mb/s != MB/s (small b vs capital B -- bits vs bytes)

144Mb/s = 18MB/s
300Mb/s = 37.5MB/s
600Mb/s = 75MB/s

On top of that, your utilization is going to be only a fraction of that bandwidth. 50% utilization is not uncommon. So expect half of those values. Thus it seems like the 802.11n you're using is 300Mb/s. So you're values are about right.

To get better speeds, you need to connect via wired device that support GigE.

Your internet speed is independent of your WiFi speed, many people confuse the two.

 

[Small White Car]

There's no way your iPhone will get 50 Mb/s.

I'm not really a hardware guy so I can't explain it, but I do know that what they squeeze in that phone is not the same hardware they put in your laptop. It's gonna be slower no matter what.

I think 20 is quite good for an iPhone, I'm pretty sure I generally see 15 or so on my Wifi even though my connection is also faster than that.

 

[Frenchjay]

Thanks for al the replys everyone. The reason I posted is on the 10mb package I previously had I would get 10mb on my iPhone most of the time, it seems a little dissapointing that it would only increase a little when jumping from 10mb to 50mb. I understand that the iPhone will not have the same wifi receiver in it from laptops etc.

Is there anything you could suggest with regards to the settings on the router to optimise the speed? FYI, speedtests have shown the full 50mb is coming through on my mac

 

[barkingDog]

Band is 2.4ghz

Channel is set to auto detect

Even when close to the router it only gets 20-24mb and not above that!

You gotta be (read: "Should be") happy with that.

I have the same set up, and never been able to breach > 16Mb/s. And my ISP download bandwidth is well above said limit.

 

[Mlrollin91]

My internet speeds are roughly 34-37Mb/s on average. When I get speeds like this on my MBP, I am getting roughly 23-25 on my iPhone. The fastest I've gotten is 26.1Mb/s when I first got my phone in June but lately been closer to 23.

 

[TokyoHam]

You guys are funny. We have 100Mbps fiber here, but I've never seen speeds on my iPhone over about 24Mbps. My iPad peaks at about the same, despite connecting to my AEBS' N network (my iMac, connected to the same network, usually gets around 60Mbps on speed tests) ... The wifi in these iDevices leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[Infraggable Kru]

You guys are funny. We have 100Mbps fiber here, but I've never seen speeds on my iPhone over about 24Mbps. My iPad peaks at about the same, despite connecting to my AEBS' N network (my iMac, connected to the same network, usually gets around 60Mbps on speed tests) ... The wifi in these iDevices leaves a lot to be desired.

You are entirely incorrect

sigh how many times am i going to have to post info there are so many threads exactly like this. its not hard to search I did it and it works fine

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1072742/
and the following information taken from another users post

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1058675/

So in other words
The iPhone 4 seems to be capable of a maximum networking speed of 100Mbps = 12mb/s up 12mb/s Down

Unless you have a really fast wifi network, the bottleneck is not the iPhone.

 

[Interstella5555]

There's no way your iPhone will get 50 Mb/s.

I'm not really a hardware guy so I can't explain it, but I do know that what they squeeze in that phone is not the same hardware they put in your laptop. It's gonna be slower no matter what.

I think 20 is quite good for an iPhone, I'm pretty sure I generally see 15 or so on my Wifi even though my connection is also faster than that.

That's what I was thinking, but, like you, had no real knowledge to back it up.

 

[Infraggable Kru]

also this thread is pretty confusing since many people are using terms interchangeably

megabyte = 8x megabit

the easiest way I found online to differentiated the two is Mb/s vs Mbps

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4 (32GB, JB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

You do realize that the speedtest you posted is showing your iPhone at 12mb/s, not 12MB/s, and that those are two very different speeds?

 

[TokyoHam]

Unless you have a really fast wifi network, the bottleneck is not the iPhone.

Sorry, but I do have a fast wifi network (and a faster internet connection than 99% of the people on this forum) and the iPhone consistently maxes out at 24Mb/s (which is not the same as 24MB/s, as has already been established).

See, here's the fastest speedtest I've had on my my iPhone:

and here's a test I just did on my iPad:

but here's what they should be:

As you can very plainly see, the iDevices come in at about half as fast as the iMac, connected to the same AEBS wifi and the same 100Mbps (aka 100Mb/s) fiber. They're not even remotely close to 12MB/s, as you seem to think.

 

[Infraggable Kru]

oh snaps I stand very much corrected. definitely the fastest wifi speeds I've seen

gomenosai

can you post more info about your setup, hardware, router,links, cost, etc

 

[TokyoHam]

oh snaps I stand very much corrected. definitely the fastest wifi speeds I've seen

gomenosai

can you post more info about your setup, hardware, router,links, cost, etc

No worries, man. My setup is pretty simple - an AEBS (one of the new dual-band ones) broadcasting at 2.4GHz (b/g/n) and 5Ghz (N, wide channels) and a second AEBS extending the range of the 2.4GHz network (although it's off at the moment as VoIP has been flaky lately and I'm wondering if the extended network is the culprit). My internet connection is 100Mbps up/down FTTH, and it costs about $35USD/month. Yeah, you guys back in the States are getting royally ****ed by your ISPs compared to what we have over here.

My iMac is connected to the 5GHz network (used to be wired but the speed difference was negligible so I just went wireless last month) and everything else is on the 2.4GHz network. Everything has been working perfectly until this past week or so; Skype and Truphone or whatever the SIP client I use is called have been really flaky lately - dropping calls, etc. So I guess I have to redo my settings. No matter what I've tried though, my iPhone has never been faster than 24Mb/s (which is really fast, yes, but only half as fast as my Mac) ...