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So my rMBP has WiFi problems. Have you? Help? Please.

M

Mr Brainz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 19, 2008
24
0
Oh dear.

I just dropped the equivalent of the cost of a child's education for a year on a laptop that doesn't work on WiFi properly.

Across the web, I can see lots of examples of people having similar complaints when Lion originally came out, and numerous pages claiming to have a fix. None of these have worked for me.

I have Lion on a MacBook Air and a 2008 MacBook Pro. Both get between 40-60 Mbps over WiFi for internet download speeds, and my network file transfer speeds are reasonable.

On my new Retina Macbook Pro I'm getting no more that 6 Mbps and if there is a network operation in progress like a screen share or file transfer then the speeds drop to about 512kbps!

File copying over the network is significantly slower also, so it's not just an internet thing.

I've attached a screengrab with 2 of my machine's Speedtest.net results - the rMBP and my Late 2008 MBP. Every time I see it I die a little inside.

Anyone else experienced anything similar? And has anyone got a fix that doesn't involve arbitrary deleting, resetting and renaming of settings and devices as described by the rest of the internet?

B
 

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Whats your network setup? Wireless N i'd imagine? If so make sure your connecting to the 5Ghz if your on dual channel router as sometimes they love to connect to the 2.4Ghz without anyone noticing. Try option clicking on the WIFI button on your menu bar and see what it says.
 
I'm getting up to 90Mbps download speed over WiFi & haven't had any problems thus far...

Sorry that doesn't really help much
 
simplekid said:
Whats your network setup? Wireless N i'd imagine? If so make sure your connecting to the 5Ghz if your on dual channel router as sometimes they love to connect to the 2.4Ghz without anyone noticing. Try option clicking on the WIFI button on your menu bar and see what it says.
Click to expand...

Yep it's Wireless N. What frequency I'm not sure. Bought it when N was in Draft still. At the office right now so can't check.

If my other devices work fine with this router I can't believe that I should upgrade the hardware to fix this. For the money, ann as per their tagline, it should "just work".

I'm on a G network at the office and this is hitting the full speed for the DSL it's on.

I've found something about a firewall config file you can edit. I'll give that a crack. But the fact that it works in the office makes me think it won't do much!
 
Any difference if you create a new user account and run the speedtest from that account? I'm not having any problems on my N network, BTW.
 
Mr Brainz said:
Oh dear.

I just dropped the equivalent of the cost of a child's education for a year on a laptop that doesn't work on WiFi properly.

Across the web, I can see lots of examples of people having similar complaints when Lion originally came out, and numerous pages claiming to have a fix. None of these have worked for me.

I have Lion on a MacBook Air and a 2008 MacBook Pro. Both get between 40-60 Mbps over WiFi for internet download speeds, and my network file transfer speeds are reasonable.

On my new Retina Macbook Pro I'm getting no more that 6 Mbps and if there is a network operation in progress like a screen share or file transfer then the speeds drop to about 512kbps!

File copying over the network is significantly slower also, so it's not just an internet thing.

I've attached a screengrab with 2 of my machine's Speedtest.net results - the rMBP and my Late 2008 MBP. Every time I see it I die a little inside.

Anyone else experienced anything similar? And has anyone got a fix that doesn't involve arbitrary deleting, resetting and renaming of settings and devices as described by the rest of the internet?

B
Click to expand...

Wow, I want to live in your school district.
 
I can tell you that this is a problem for all Mac across the board since it came out.


Random High ping, and slow download....

I have that problem for every mac that I owned, but not present on PC laptop.


Also, it depends on your router. Mac's are very picky on that.
 
Mr Brainz said:
That is a ball ache I've not decided to try and tackle yet.
Click to expand...

You've already spent a lot of time it sounds like looking around the web for a cure all, but you need to narrow down your problem. Here's what I would try:
- rMBP Hardware: Run Apple Hardware Test by holding the d key during startup.
- User account software issue: Test under a new user. Takes all of 2 seconds to create a new account and rerun your speedtest.
- System software issue: Clean install the OS and rule out your own software contributions completely. Of course, have your time machine backup first. Makes restoring fairly painless.
- Still having a problem? Try a different router at a friends or a coffee shop, although to avoid a false positive you may need to independently verify sufficient download speeds on a different computer.
 
astrorider said:
You've already spent a lot of time it sounds like looking around the web for a cure all, but you need to narrow down your problem. Here's what I would try:
- rMBP Hardware: Run Apple Hardware Test by holding the d key during startup.
- User account software issue: Test under a new user. Takes all of 2 seconds to create a new account and rerun your speedtest.
- System software issue: Clean install the OS and rule out your own software contributions completely. Of course, have your time machine backup first. Makes restoring fairly painless.
- Still having a problem? Try a different router at a friends or a coffee shop, although to avoid a false positive you may need to independently verify sufficient download speeds on a different computer.
Click to expand...

That's all very casually insinuated. This is a brand new laptop. Is it not crazy to you to clean install an OS on a brand new machine?! I shouldn't have to! I'll also lose iLife doing that.

I've not done anything extraordinary to this machine that I haven't done on my other functioning Macs. This is why I'm upset.

I'll try the user account thing. The ball ache part is when all the permissions get muddled up. I've had that on 2 of my machines where I've had to re-assign permissions to a bundle of files and apps when my home folder stopped me writing to it and I had to change account. I'd love to avoid that horror.

My other hope is that Mountain Lion drops very soon and that fixes it. Apparently I'm entitled to a free upgrade.
 
Just ordered a Netgear R6300 802.11ac router. Screw it.

The last one is a good few years old. If this don't fix it along with a Mountain Lion upgrade I'll have to head to Cupertino and shank Tim Cook myself.
 
If you are even having trouble moving files over your network, then its most likely your router.

Hopefully your new one works for you
 
Mr Brainz said:
Just ordered a Netgear R6300 802.11ac router. Screw it.

The last one is a good few years old. If this don't fix it along with a Mountain Lion upgrade I'll have to head to Cupertino and shank Tim Cook myself.
Click to expand...

Epic :) I like it .

Hopefully it is somethign with the newer wireless N card jus tno agreeing with the older draft version of N
 
WiFi problems here too

I can confirm that I'm seeing major wifi drops and horribly slow transfer speeds on my day-old rMBP.

I connect to a rather vanilla NETGEAR ProSafe™ 802.11g Wireless VPN Firewall FVG318, and it works well with a variety of other Macs, PCs, and game boxes.

I'm not a happy camper here....

(Otherwise I love the machine.)
 
Last edited:
Mr Brainz said:
That's all very casually insinuated. This is a brand new laptop. Is it not crazy to you to clean install an OS on a brand new machine?! I shouldn't have to! I'll also lose iLife doing that.
Click to expand...

Obviously you can ignore my recommendation to clean install or even setup a new user account if you haven't restored data from your previous mac. But if you have, what you may be experiencing could be software related. Since you're the type of person who's first thought before the items I recommended is to go changing firewall config files that require admin privileges, a software problem doesn't seem all that far fetched. I'm not trying to be harsh in saying that, but since no one knows what you've done so far we can only try to help based on what you've said.

Mr Brainz said:
I've not done anything extraordinary to this machine that I haven't done on my other functioning Macs. This is why I'm upset.
Click to expand...

I can understand being upset, but you came to a user forum asking for help. I assumed you wanted to try to fix your problem. By all means, take your machine back and tell Apple to sort it out if that's what you want. If there was some easy cure all that fixed any wifi problem anyone ever had, though, Apple would probably just build it in I would think.

Mr Brainz said:
I'll try the user account thing. The ball ache part is when all the permissions get muddled up. I've had that on 2 of my machines where I've had to re-assign permissions to a bundle of files and apps when my home folder stopped me writing to it and I had to change account. I'd love to avoid that horror.
Click to expand...

Creating a new user account is completely benign. Same with visiting speedtest.net from that new account. It doesn't even have to be an "Admin" account, a "Standard" would work fine for this. It's not going to adversely affect anything, and you can freely delete that new account when you're done.

Mr Brainz said:
My other hope is that Mountain Lion drops very soon and that fixes it. Apparently I'm entitled to a free upgrade.
Click to expand...

It's possible, and I don't mean to be a pessimist, but it seems as likely that it won't make any difference at all (if 10.7.1-10.7.4 didn't after all).
 
Originally Posted by Mr Brainz
Oh dear.

I just dropped the equivalent of the cost of a child's education for a year on a laptop that doesn't work on WiFi properly.


Interstella5555 said:
Wow, I want to live in your school district.
Click to expand...

That's about right. I pay taxes to fund the public school, but the cost for each of my kids to attend private grade school is about the cost of a high-end rMBP.
 
iEnvy said:
If you are even having trouble moving files over your network, then its most likely your router.

Hopefully your new one works for you
Click to expand...

I hope it works too. But my router is not the problem, because my other Macs work fine.

----------
Exponent said:
I can confirm that I'm seeing major wifi drops and horribly slow transfer speeds on my day-old rMBP.

I connect to a rather vanilla NETGEAR ProSafe™ 802.11g Wireless VPN Firewall FVG318, and it works well with a variety of other Macs, PCs, and game boxes.

I'm not a happy camper here....

(Otherwise I love the machine.)
Click to expand...

Hi-five!

Welcome to the worst club you've ever joined.

Well, there was that 'listen to Justin Beiber whilst killing puppies" club I joined once, but we don't talk about that.
 
astrorider said:
Creating a new user account is completely benign. Same with visiting speedtest.net from that new account. It doesn't even have to be an "Admin" account, a "Standard" would work fine for this. It's not going to adversely affect anything, and you can freely delete that new account when you're done.
Click to expand...

It's benign until the point that (if required) you need to make it your "master" account. The last times I had a chown / chmod day of fun getting everything to belong to my new master account.

I did start afresh. I don't do transfers as I like having a clear out.

I am grateful for the time you've taken to reply. I don't mean to come across as a bell end. I do enjoy to aimlessly vent.
 
VFC said:
Originally Posted by Mr Brainz
Oh dear.

I just dropped the equivalent of the cost of a child's education for a year on a laptop that doesn't work on WiFi properly.




That's about right. I pay taxes to fund the public school, but the cost for each of my kids to attend private grade school is about the cost of a high-end rMBP.
Click to expand...

Again, I wish I lived there unless you're talking per month (which the OP is not) and ~$250 a month is dirt cheap for education.
 
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