MacBook Air flash drive affecting internet speed.

[ssb333]

When you say reboot do you mean reset? If so I've done this to both the modem and the router.

I'm not the most computer savvy guy around.

Don't waste your money and get a new router. It's not the router. It's the MBA. I was also getting slow download speed with my MBA. So, I took it to the Apple Store and the Apple Store and genius did a ping test and said my wireless card is defective. He ordered a new MBA for me.

You may have the same problem.

 

[kp98077]

So I am getting 28 can someone tell me if that's good or bad?

 

[Hellhammer]

So I am getting 28 can someone tell me if that's good or bad?

Depends what is the speed you're paying for or what you get on another computer. 28Mb/s sounds great though, I wouldn't worry. I can only dream about speeds like that

 

[shah1]

Just carried out a speed test on 13" MBA and got score of 10.86 mbps! I am in the UK so is this normal or do I have a faulty wifi card?

 

[kp98077]

i am at starbucks and only get 1.86! whats up with that!! at home 28

 

[gwsat]

I suggest that the OP's slow Internet download speeds have nothing to do with either flash storage or a wireless network and everything to do with his having noticed his slow download speeds on a Saturday.

Last night, Sunday, I checked my download speeds from Cox Communications' high speed Internet service and my speed was only about 8 Mbps. I realized, though, that download speeds via a cable high speed Internet service are characteristically much slower during the weekend than they are during the week. The reason is that the cable company puts a number of its customers' on each node and the more of them who are active on a given node at once, the slower each customer's download speed will be. This morning, Monday, I confirmed this by running my go to Internet speed test from Speedmatters.org, the same utility I used last night, and my download speed jumped up to 21 Mbps.

If you are experiencing slow download speeds, it is unlikely that even your 802.11g wireless network is the culprit. Theoretically, an 802.11g network is capable of speeds up to 54 Mbps. Typically, such networks will download data at between 24 and 36 Mbps. Thus, if you are worried about Internet download speeds that seem too slow, it is unlikely that even an 802.11g wireless network has detrimentally affected them. Of course, an 802.11n wireless network is even faster than that.

 

[Hellhammer]

Just carried out a speed test on 13" MBA and got score of 10.86 mbps! I am in the UK so is this normal or do I have a faulty wifi card?

Again, depends what you pay for and what you get on another computer. It's impossible to say is it normal or not because people have different connection speeds. Some have 2Mb/s while someone has 100Mb/s

 

[ikir]

i am at starbucks and only get 1.86! whats up with that!! at home 28

Thats better than most italian adsl

In my shop MacBook Air wifi seems faster than other macs. maybe it is an issue with some router, channel or frequencies

 

[Scottsdale]

I guess I should have been more explicit.

The wife's PC is a laptop. We are both running on the same wifi connection.
Doing tests side by side, alternating as not to affect the download speed by overwhelming the wifi or modem (not sure that would even be a problem).

When testing, the laptop PC was getting nearly twice the speed as the MAB.

I realize that w/ flash drive you can access the memory faster but was wondering if downloading information may be slower to the flash drive compared to a traditional disk drive. Again I had a friend do similar tests w/ similar results. His MAB and iPad, both on wifi, downloaded slower than his Mac Pro desktop, which was hardwired to the modem, and his wife's laptop PC which was connected by wifi.

I tried turning off the firewall on my MAB and that really didn't seem to speed the downloads up at all. I also tried using Google Chrome browser instead of Safari with no improvements to speed of downloading.

Get as close as possible to the wireless router and try again. Better yet, someone with a dual boot MBA can check the exact same MBA in OS X and Windows 7... I bet the Windows OS destroys OS X on the same MBA hardware.

 

[Mosco]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GytyxtJa0ak

Here is a youtube video I made showing the difference in wifi speed.

It took about 5 minutes to download kismac before the test on the macbook air.

I also want to point out that the access point is about ~15 feet away with one wall in the way.

 

[virtualmatt]

Wireless N 5 GHz issues

I've got the baseline 13" MBA and I have been going crazy troubleshooting the wifi in this thing. I use it in same situations I used the 15" MBP it replaced and it's not behaving the same.

I have an Airport Extreme base station and run the dual N networks (2.4 and 5 GHz). The 2.4 network hosts the XBOX 360, Wii and iPhones while the 5 GHz network is for the iMac, MBPs, and now MBA. The problem I'm seeing is that I can't use the 5 GHz network without serious lag. If I run a continuous ping it will begin degrading from ~60ms all the way to 24000ms or complete timeout at times. A simple repositioning of the MBA will sometimes solve this issue but it's frustrating to the point that I just joined the 2.4GHz network to avoid the hassle. This is not acceptable in my opinion.

Honestly it feels as if they've put a speed limit on the Airport cards in these MBAs to save battery but with very bad side effects. I have a MBP 15" docked upstairs still that I will bring down and test beside this MBA to prove that it works in the same places on 5GHz 'N' networks.

I have one more week on my Best Buy return policy, if this doesn't get sorted out I may just return it and wait....if they let me. Sucks to have no Apple Store in my city.

 

[mloffa]

Thats mine at home.
Any reason why it's so slow?
The router is pretty ancient. Could that be it?

 

[virtualmatt]

Here's a speedtest on the 5GHz network:

And here's the 2.4GHz network test taken 90 seconds later from the same exact position in the house:

Something is fishy here.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

I suggest that the OP's slow Internet download speeds have nothing to do with either flash storage or a wireless network and everything to do with his having noticed his slow download speeds on a Saturday.

Last night, Sunday, I checked my download speeds from Cox Communications' high speed Internet service and my speed was only about 8 Mbps. I realized, though, that download speeds via a cable high speed Internet service are characteristically much slower during the weekend than they are during the week. The reason is that the cable company puts a number of its customers' on each node and the more of them who are active on a given node at once, the slower each customer's download speed will be. This morning, Monday, I confirmed this by running my go to Internet speed test from Speedmatters.org, the same utility I used last night, and my download speed jumped up to 21 Mbps.

If you are experiencing slow download speeds, it is unlikely that even your 802.11g wireless network is the culprit. Theoretically, an 802.11g network is capable of speeds up to 54 Mbps. Typically, such networks will download data at between 24 and 36 Mbps. Thus, if you are worried about Internet download speeds that seem too slow, it is unlikely that even an 802.11g wireless network has detrimentally affected them. Of course, an 802.11n wireless network is even faster than that.

How would you explain the fact that my wife's PC laptop would download nearly twice as fast at basically the exact same time?