Max WiFi connection on 2020 MacBook Pro

[citivolus]

For those of us with faster connections and/or using NAS etc., it's a bit more material.

Yes that would include me 😉

 

[citivolus]

I’m guessing the 2 port TB3 (1.4Ghz) model is 2x2 and the 4 port (2GHz) model is 3x3. If people post their results then we’ll know.

Well, I've confirmed this. For several reasons I have upgraded to the 4 port (2Ghz) model and confirmed that I can now get a Tx rate up to 1,170Mpbs.

Unfortunately I am "only" getting about 60MBps when transferring from my iMac with SSD and Gig-E ethernet. Ideally I would like to get transfer speeds up to 100MBps when reading/writing files. Using a USB-C/Gig-E adapter, my iPerf test to the iMac show 940Mbps. Via Wifi, I am getting about 660Mbps using iPerf. I want to maximize this via Wifi.

So I need to upgrade my router (Asus AC66U from 2012). What are people using today and what rates are you getting via Wifi?

@Howard2k, I saw in another thread you posted that you were getting 100MBps from your NAS. Can you confirm and post your setup?

 

[Howard2k]

I did post that. That may have been before I was aware that the Activity Monitor network stats were totally useless 🙂 It seems to double the presented throughput.

If I redo the tests just using the straight file size and a stop watch I get results that seem to be half of Activity Monitor, and this is also reflected on the dashboard of my NAS. I'm using 10.14.6. I'm not sure if this issue has been fixed in Catalina, I suspect not.

Just to check my sanity, I ran some tests again. I'm using a large file which will be more efficient to transfer. If I was using a slew of smaller files the performance would go down I'm sure.

I'm using a 2015 13" MacBook Pro, DLink DIR878, and Synology NAS DS218j.


At my computer desk right now I have an 878Mb/s TX rate to my router.
I used two different files (2.52GB and 2.23GB) and transferred each file to and from my NAS.

With an 878Mb/s connection rate I saw an average of 67MB/s from NAS to MBPro, and 62MB/s from MBPro to NAS.
With a 1.3Gb/s connection rate I saw an average of 74MB/s from NAS to MBPro, and 74MB/s from MBPro to NAS.


This is the Activity Monitor metric that I was referring to. It seems to double the actual speed.

 

[citivolus]

I did post that. That may have been before I was aware that the Activity Monitor network stats were totally useless 🙂 It seems to double the presented throughput.

Thanks, unfortunately I got bitten by that bug too, as I posted in the MacBook Air forum:

I was really determined to get to the bottom of this. After a lot of testing, I've found a bug in Catalina that is causing this behavior. Seems that macOS is double-counting the network traffic uploaded by a wifi connection. This can be confirmed by doing a simple internet speed test. My internet connection is 50Mbps/50Mbps. When I run the speed test on my 2017 MacBook running Mojave, it correctly shows the same upload and download speed in the Network tab of Activity Monitor. When I run the same speed test on my 2020 MacBook Pro and 2020 MacBook Air which are running Catalina, the "Data sent/sec" value is double what it is on my other devices, which obviously is incorrect as my internet speed is fixed. Guess it's time to file a bug report.

Thanks also for doing these tests:

With an 878Mb/s connection rate I saw an average of 67MB/s from NAS to MBPro, and 62MB/s from MBPro to NAS.
With a 1.3Gb/s connection rate I saw an average of 74MB/s from NAS to MBPro, and 74MB/s from MBPro to NAS.

Would you also be able to do a simple iperf3 test?

 

[Howard2k]

Would you also be able to do a simple iperf3 test?

I will. I don't know if I can get to it today but if not I'll give it a shot this evening.

 

[citivolus]

FWIW I did another test between my MBPro 2020 4-port using a Gig-E dongle and my wired iMac. iPerf3 showed 115MB/s and straight file copy using a stopwatch yielded a calculated 108MB/s.

Using Wifi on the MBPro, I got a Tx rate of 1,170 Mbps. iPerf3 showed 81MB/s and straight file copy using a stopwatch yielded a calculated 50MB/s.

After combing the web, it seems the TP-Link AC5400 may provide best performance. One user here reported seeing almost 100MB/s when copying from wired to a WiFi MBPro. Anyone else achieving similar speeds on home WLAN?

 

[Howard2k]

Sorry, haven’t been able to find a suitable binary for iperf on the DS218j.

 

[glintoz]

FWIW I did another test between my MBPro 2020 4-port using a Gig-E dongle and my wired iMac. iPerf3 showed 115MB/s and straight file copy using a stopwatch yielded a calculated 108MB/s.

Using Wifi on the MBPro, I got a Tx rate of 1,170 Mbps. iPerf3 showed 81MB/s and straight file copy using a stopwatch yielded a calculated 50MB/s.

After combing the web, it seems the TP-Link AC5400 may provide best performance. One user here reported seeing almost 100MB/s when copying from wired to a WiFi MBPro. Anyone else achieving similar speeds on home WLAN?

Don't forget - wired Ethernet is full duplex - send/receive at the same time. Wireless is half duplex and only one device at a time can talk. A device listens and when there is no traffic it will start transmitting (wasted time = slower transfer speed). When transferring files you have to tell the sender that you got the data they just sent you. This means you have to interrupt the download and send traffic in the other direction - more delay, less throughput.

Wireless is also a shared communications channel (like an old fashioned ethernet hub) so if other devices on your wifi router are talking to the Internet or another device on the wifi then you have to wait - more delay, less throughput.

Also the 1170Mb/s WiFi date rate is raw data rate and your transfer has a whole pile of protocol overheads on top of the base data rate - again less throughput. Getting 600+Mbits/s (81 MBytes/s) on a wifi connection is impressive.