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Seriously what the hell is wrong with wifi's ?

S

sedde

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 9, 2011
9
0
So in the past 3-4 years i owned pretty much every mac there was available, expect from mac pros and mac minis. My issue ?

The wifi chipset always seems to be really really slow, i have tried various N routers with different thoughputs ranging from 150 to 600mbps.

My networks is like this :

I got a linux box in the basement with 1gbps network around the house, and my access points are 300mbps and 600mbps with gigabit ethernet.

I nowadays own a base rMBP model, but my problem is still there. When on osx lets say i try to copy a movie from my linux box to my rmbp. The file weighs 5gb and i can NEVER EVER get writes of over 7mb/s, and when this happens, browsing internet is like is not happening, too much lag on safari or whatever browser, its like the wifi chip is capping its speed. Rebooting on windows i can see that its connecting not to the mentioned speeds, but on 150mbps and i am downloading on the same speeds from my linux box, but there i can actually browse the internet with no problem.

I know people will jump to conclusions to say " Apple products are picky with access points/routers" , but i mean i have changed over 10 products and brands, what the hell. Is there a way to fix this ?

Its retarded having a friend over with his crappy HP 500$ machine and have him copy the movie in like 2 minutes, and it makes 10+ on mine.

Like i said its not only my rMBP but pretty much EVERY mac i ever had.
 
Have you tried a test with one of your machines at a friends house, to see if there is interference in your place?
 
I've noticed slow wifi since upgrading to Lion, but I was using mostly ethernet before so I can't say for sure that that is the problem. I'm getting transmit speeds of 120-140 on my (last, last gen) Airport Extreme on 2.4ghz and 300 on 5ghz sitting right next to the router.

This comment is as informed as the 'repair permissions' fix-all solution but maybe try 5ghz?
 
imahawki said:
Have you tried a test with one of your machines at a friends house, to see if there is interference in your place?
Click to expand...

Yeah, same thing happens.

----------
grahamnp said:
I've noticed slow wifi since upgrading to Lion, but I was using mostly ethernet before so I can't say for sure that that is the problem. I'm getting transmit speeds of 120-140 on my (last, last gen) Airport Extreme on 2.4ghz and 300 on 5ghz sitting right next to the router.

This comment is as informed as the 'repair permissions' fix-all solution but maybe try 5ghz?
Click to expand...

But yet again can you get a file on those speeds or is it just what it says ?
 
Seems really slow. My iMac is connected with Gbit and new MBP with WiFi and I get steady 19MB/s on transfer rates.

All connected using the newest Time Capulse on the 5GHz Band by the way.
 
For what it's worth...

I had to copy 80Gb of files from my NAS to a USB3 SSD but as I didn't buy the TB->giga Ethernet adapter, I had to use wifi.

Connected to 5Ghz N, and at a distance of two feet, I only managed to average around 4MB/s over the (many) hours it took to pull those files across.

This in direct line-of-sight, makes me seriously question whether you are right in suspecting that Apple's wifi implementation is poor.

The specifics of my case are: 2010 Airport Extreme (the dual N one), new MBPR, and a QNap NAS drive connected directly to the AEx via gigabit Ethernet.

Any ideas?
 
steve-p said:
Yeah, buy the Ethernet adapter for shifting large amounts of data :)
Click to expand...
It's on order.......

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ugp said:
Seems really slow. My iMac is connected with Gbit and new MBP with WiFi and I get steady 19MB/s on transfer rates.

All connected using the newest Time Capulse on the 5GHz Band by the way.
Click to expand...
Would you be so kind as to post your settings so that we can see if we're missing something? No way have I ever seen anything like those speeds with N even with the laptop almost on top of the AEXBS...
 
Are you using an Apple router? I've found the best speeds I can get my Apple stuff is to use my airport extreme. I've also found helpful to separate the 2.4 and 5.8ghz radios to 2 different network names. The 5ghz is the fastest if in the same room, but the 2.4 has much better coverage going through walls. It's supposed to switch automatically, but in my wifi 'noisy' environment where 20+ stations can be seen, it's better to manually switch between the 2.
 
magbarn said:
Are you using an Apple router? I've found the best speeds I can get my Apple stuff is to use my airport extreme. I've also found helpful to separate the 2.4 and 5.8ghz radios to 2 different network names. The 5ghz is the fastest if in the same room, but the 2.4 has much better coverage going through walls. It's supposed to switch automatically, but in my wifi 'noisy' environment where 20+ stations can be seen, it's better to manually switch between the 2.
Click to expand...
I am, but I am not sure about the original poster. With an all-Apple network (apart from the NAS drive, which is connected via very quick gigabit Ethernet), and with only a couple of feet between the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station and the MBPR, I am still struggling to see much more than 4MB/s on large transfers when connecting to the 5GHz wireless N network.
 
I have an 09 Airport Extreme and with my mid 2010 MB and my early 2009 MacMini, I get 10-12MBps. Granted, it's all within 20 feet of each other. Only wires running are from my AE to Cisco ASA to Cable modem.
 
sedde said:
Its retarded having a friend over with his crappy HP 500$ machine and have him copy the movie in like 2 minutes, and it makes 10+ on mine.

Like i said its not only my rMBP but pretty much EVERY mac i ever had.
Click to expand...

Oh dear...the huge manatee.

Maybe the English have a partial answer...

A...lu...mi...nium.

Al least you don't have the social stigma of carrying around that plastic PC cr*p.
You're still one of the cool kids, albeit on the slow bus. :cool:
 
Where do you live?

If you live in a house with brick or concrete walls expect the wireless performance to suffer. If you live in a high density neighborhood expect wireless performance to suffer because there will be crowding of the wireless channels.
 
Bubba Satori said:
Oh dear...the huge manatee.

Maybe the English have a partial answer...

A...lu...mi...nium.

Al least you don't have the social stigma of carrying around that plastic PC cr*p.
You're still one of the cool kids, albeit on the slow bus. :cool:
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the antenna is always beneath a non-metal surface.

Also doesn't explain the large variation in speeds between otherwise like machines.
 
jtcedinburgh said:
I am, but I am not sure about the original poster. With an all-Apple network (apart from the NAS drive, which is connected via very quick gigabit Ethernet), and with only a couple of feet between the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station and the MBPR, I am still struggling to see much more than 4MB/s on large transfers when connecting to the 5GHz wireless N network.
Click to expand...

That is really weird. I can get 10-15 mbps all day in transfers between my mac mini on gigE and my rMBP via 2010 airport extreme. (When the rMBP is in the same room) I'm wondering if it's some incompatibility between your NAS and OSX? Try your rMBP in bootcamp and see if you get better speeds if your win7 machines are getting better transfer rates. Or wait for the TB-GigE adapter to come in and that will answer your question. My rMBP has the same wifi performance as my 2011 MBP 15.
 
Ok...

I have changed the settings (just to try) and the speed has increased from a max of 4MB/s at a distance of three feet, to in excess of 10MB/s at a similar distance. It might even be more, although for my purposes I am happy with 10MB/s for wifi.

Basically, I changed the channel to a different one just to see. And lo and behold, here we are :)
 
While running windows i get same speeds, but when i stream something from full speed 7-8 mb/s i CAN actually browse the internet, while on OSX i cant, i am running GM ML right now btw, and like i said its not the only mac i had that had this problem, but all of them.
 
wifi speed

I have mbpro 2011 with zyxel keenetic lite.
i have max 72.2 mb connection with my mbpro and 102 mp with any other laptop with N.
my router is 2.5 Ghz only and can reach 150 mb..but why only mac has the slowest connection speed?
it shows mcs 7
 
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