Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New MBA 11 wireless speed issues?

S

SammySlim

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 7, 2010
38
0
I have a new MBA 11, 1.4/2GB/128. Updated to 10.6.5

My wireless speeds are much slower on the new MBA. In my apartment, where I pay for fast u-verse speeds, my older 2007 Blackbook (C2D, 2GB, 10.6.5 also) gets speedtest.net download speeds regularly between 10-11 mb/s. The new MBA, in the same location in the apartment, gets between 1.2 and 1.7 mb/s. Same network, everything. Apt. network is password-protected.

I get the same issue at my home in California (I commute between Houston and CA). MBA has difficulty acquiring and maintaining my unencrypted home network - also slower speeds.

Apple support had no suggestions, and the information I could find online was mostly for older MBAs under 10.6.4. I can take it to the Apple Store for a test but wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing the issue.

The MBA is otherwise fine and functional for basic surfing and work but it takes FOREVER to download anything (2 hours for 10.6.5, for example). Driving me nuts.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
 
SammySlim said:
I have a new MBA 11, 1.4/2GB/128. Updated to 10.6.5

My wireless speeds are much slower on the new MBA. In my apartment, where I pay for fast u-verse speeds, my older 2007 Blackbook (C2D, 2GB, 10.6.5 also) gets speedtest.net download speeds regularly between 10-11 mb/s. The new MBA, in the same location in the apartment, gets between 1.2 and 1.7 mb/s. Same network, everything. Apt. network is password-protected.

I get the same issue at my home in California (I commute between Houston and CA). MBA has difficulty acquiring and maintaining my unencrypted home network - also slower speeds.

Apple support had no suggestions, and the information I could find online was mostly for older MBAs under 10.6.4. I can take it to the Apple Store for a test but wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing the issue.

The MBA is otherwise fine and functional for basic surfing and work but it takes FOREVER to download anything (2 hours for 10.6.5, for example). Driving me nuts.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
If you can, try a different router or different wireless configuration on the router to see if speed improves. The slow speed could be caused by protocol errors between the router and the laptop. How doess the signal strength show on the Air?
My 11 had better, faster wifi connection that my 2009 MBP sitting right next to it.
 
SammySlim said:
I have a new MBA 11, 1.4/2GB/128. Updated to 10.6.5

My wireless speeds are much slower on the new MBA. In my apartment, where I pay for fast u-verse speeds, my older 2007 Blackbook (C2D, 2GB, 10.6.5 also) gets speedtest.net download speeds regularly between 10-11 mb/s. The new MBA, in the same location in the apartment, gets between 1.2 and 1.7 mb/s. Same network, everything. Apt. network is password-protected.

I get the same issue at my home in California (I commute between Houston and CA). MBA has difficulty acquiring and maintaining my unencrypted home network - also slower speeds.

Apple support had no suggestions, and the information I could find online was mostly for older MBAs under 10.6.4. I can take it to the Apple Store for a test but wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing the issue.

The MBA is otherwise fine and functional for basic surfing and work but it takes FOREVER to download anything (2 hours for 10.6.5, for example). Driving me nuts.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Wow, that's slow. What's the transmit rate? Click on the wireless icon on the top right screen as you hold the option key. Should be somewhere between 50-100.
 
Thanks - will check transmit info when I get home. But I cannot make changes to the router settings AFAIK. One would think that the same protocols/settings on the router would have similar effects on the 2 notebooks sitting right next to each other. I might try to reset the router (power off/on) but this is happening at more than one location so I don't believe it is router-specific.

Keep the cards and letters (and ideas) coming folks! thanks...
 
i have the same problem im down in my basement and my MBA 13.3 shows full bars sometimes just 1 missing and my internet cuts on and off and my videos are choppy. My internet shuts off like every 2-3 minutes.

This is my first MAC soo i have no idea whats wrong. i was told that the MBA has a better wifi system or antenna too boost wifi.
 
My wireless speeds seem slower too. My 4 year old gateway laptop has faster download speeds. Kind of weird. Randomly the computer says its not connected to the internet as well, which I never get on the gateway. Transmit rate is 54.
 
LS1 said:
My wireless speeds seem slower too. My 4 year old gateway laptop has faster download speeds. Kind of weird. Randomly the computer says its not connected to the internet as well, which I never get on the gateway. Transmit rate is 54.
Click to expand...

My transmit rate is currently at 117. At work it never gets above 54.
 
Are these speeds on 802.11g? On my 802.11n network it's showing a speed of 300.
 
Hakstern626 said:
whats the difference of G and N?

at home mine says 802.11g
Transmit rate 11-15

this is in my basement
Click to expand...

G is a significantly slower standard. The MBA supports B,G, and N protocals. If you have a wireless router (like the Apple Airport Extreme) you can connect at N speeds which will be a huge difference.
 
SammySlim said:
I have a new MBA 11, 1.4/2GB/128. Updated to 10.6.5

My wireless speeds are much slower on the new MBA. In my apartment, where I pay for fast u-verse speeds, my older 2007 Blackbook (C2D, 2GB, 10.6.5 also) gets speedtest.net download speeds regularly between 10-11 mb/s. The new MBA, in the same location in the apartment, gets between 1.2 and 1.7 mb/s. Same network, everything. Apt. network is password-protected.

I get the same issue at my home in California (I commute between Houston and CA). MBA has difficulty acquiring and maintaining my unencrypted home network - also slower speeds.

Apple support had no suggestions, and the information I could find online was mostly for older MBAs under 10.6.4. I can take it to the Apple Store for a test but wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing the issue.

The MBA is otherwise fine and functional for basic surfing and work but it takes FOREVER to download anything (2 hours for 10.6.5, for example). Driving me nuts.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Take it to the Apple Store. MY 11inch MBA had the same problem. I took it to the Apple Store. The Genius there diagnosed it and ordered me a new computer!!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117)

The unibody of the new MBA may be the reason behind this. Let hope the next update include retifiying MBA wifi problems
 
iNotion said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117)

The unibody of the new MBA may be the reason behind this. Let hope the next update include retifiying MBA wifi problems
Click to expand...

No, see my posts. The MBA is as fast as any MBP for wireless.
 
Ive got the same problem....took nearly 4 hours to download 10.6.5:eek:

Im using a netgear dgn2000 router and ive tried everything and still get very slow speeds.

Im connected to 802.11n and get a max transmit rate of 130 but normally 54.
 
What should be the max transmit rate on a wireless N network?

Im currently at 130 according to the airport stats..Is that the correct speed for a N network?

Thanks
 
G you get up to 54Mbps
N 2.4Ghz you get up to 130Mbps
N 5Ghz you get up to 300Mbps

I noticed that the N 2.4Ghz in MBA is very slow. My Win box with 2.4Ghz is much faster. MBA with speedtest.net I only get 5-7Mbps download. When switch to 5Ghz, I got up to 40MBps download speed. This is the same router. My router is doing dual band simultaneously. I configured my MBA to use 5Ghz only. However, you do scarified the range with 5Ghz. But, I stil get close to 100% coverage throughout the house.

BTW: I have D-Link DIR-655 and DIR-825 dual bands.
 
Last edited:
I am also seeing this on my 11 inch.

I have 2 routers in my house acting as access points with the same SSID.

When I am near my DIR-655, downspeed speeds are fine. When I am near my other one, speeds are really really slow. My software update download basically stopped.

My macbook works fine in this environment (and so does every other laptop in this household)

It's basically unusable in my bedroom.
 
J273 said:
What should be the max transmit rate on a wireless N network?

Im currently at 130 according to the airport stats..Is that the correct speed for a N network?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Go into Airport Utility and change your settings to 5GHZ N only. That should kick it into high gear.
 
bcaslis said:
G is a significantly slower standard. The MBA supports B,G, and N protocals. If you have a wireless router (like the Apple Airport Extreme) you can connect at N speeds which will be a huge difference.
Click to expand...

soo if i get an Airport Extreme would it work with other laptops in my house? i am currently the only mac and it just seems like my Mac doesnt get same wifi speed as other but it shows more bars then other laptops in my house
 
My MBA 11 wireless was super slow. After some searching, I found some posts suggesting a rebuild would help. Key to this was zeroing the disk before the rebuild. I tried this and it worked for me. Now my wireless speeds are where I'd expect them to be.

No idea why this worked, and YMMV. I tried it, got a result, very happy.

Damo
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back