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

[Mr Brainz]

Lol. It sounds like you went to a school that only costs $2100 a year...

State schooled and proud. With crap grades. And I still hold my own in an industry filled with privately educated, degree-wielding people that are occasionally threatened by me.


This response will pretty much guarantee that no one will want to help me now. Sod it. I hope my new router / OS combo will help me in a week or so. So thanks for everyone's input.

 

[Tritons]

State schooled and proud. With crap grades. And I still hold my own in an industry filled with privately educated, degree-wielding people that are occasionally threatened by me.


This response will pretty much guarantee that no one will want to help me now. Sod it. I hope my new router / OS combo will help me in a week or so. So thanks for everyone's input.

Just because you study in state school?, c'mon man, we will help if we can.

 

[ZipZap]

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

So try changing the channel the rMBP is using. Most likely you have a hardware issue on your MBP. Simple test....take it somewhere you can connect to another n-network.

 

[tillsbury]

State schooled and proud. With crap grades. And I still hold my own in an industry filled with privately educated, degree-wielding people that are occasionally threatened by me.


This response will pretty much guarantee that no one will want to help me now. Sod it. I hope my new router / OS combo will help me in a week or so. So thanks for everyone's input.

I was referring to the sort of school that played soggy biscuit, not to your education generally... have a look at what I was quoting... With luck, at a state school you will have missed out on this game...

 

[TheMacBookPro]

I'll also lose iLife doing that.

No, you won't. When you first booted the computer and logged into the App Store, it adds the iLife applications to your list of purchased applications so you can redownload it at any time in the future.

If it wasn't automatically linked, just call up Apple and they will provide you with several redemption codes to link the applications to your account.

 

[Mr Brainz]

No, you won't. When you first booted the computer and logged into the App Store, it adds the iLife applications to your list of purchased applications so you can redownload it at any time in the future.

If it wasn't automatically linked, just call up Apple and they will provide you with several redemption codes to link the applications to your account.

Nice one man. I didn't spot this.

 

[houkouonchi]

Another one here with no problem.

At work:

14 megabytes/sec (112 megabits)

Home:

9 megabytes/sec (72 megabits).

Both are 802.11n.

 

[Mr Brainz]

Update. Tried another N network and I was unable to replicate the problem. Guess that means my new router will fix it when it arrives.

Still a little screwing that I had to change my router just for this, but I already had more money than sense in the first place. So I can't really complain.

Thanks for everyone's input. Would love to know why it doesn't like my current router. It's not with the headache though right now for me.

If anyone does work this out, I'd love to hear your experience and why.

Cheers

G

 

[houkouonchi]

Update. Tried another N network and I was unable to replicate the problem. Guess that means my new router will fix it when it arrives.

Still a little screwing that I had to change my router just for this, but I already had more money than sense in the first place. So I can't really complain.

Thanks for everyone's input. Would love to know why it doesn't like my current router. It's not with the headache though right now for me.

If anyone does work this out, I'd love to hear your experience and why.

Cheers

G

Some network devices do not work well with others.

For example both my dell and my netbook with draft n works like crap with this really expensive (I mean really expensive) wireless setup we have at work. Packetloss, disconnects, CRAP speed. It was significantly better when it was using some cheapo POS Netgear. Yet now with my macbook I get amazing speeds to it (over 100 megabits and i am quite a ways away). It can just really depend.

 

[01mggt]

Update. Tried another N network and I was unable to replicate the problem. Guess that means my new router will fix it when it arrives.

Still a little screwing that I had to change my router just for this, but I already had more money than sense in the first place. So I can't really complain.

Thanks for everyone's input. Would love to know why it doesn't like my current router. It's not with the headache though right now for me.

If anyone does work this out, I'd love to hear your experience and why.

Cheers

G

Excellent news. My wifi is flawless over 802.11g. I can't wait till my mac eddition netgear n600 router gets here! Time to reap the benefits of network storage

 

[katmeef]

and if there is a network operation in progress like a screen share or file transfer then the speeds drop to about 512kbps!

I have noticed the same, if I'm copying a large file from my iMac then attempt to browse the iMacs folders its slow as molasses. This didn't happen when doing the same with my 09 mbp. No changes to network config, using a Cisco 1131ag access point and a Cisco 2801 router

 

[Anonymouse106]

I upgraded to the new Airport Express and I am amazed at the reliability and speed of the connection. It also connects instantly when opening the lid on my rMBP. The original Express that I had previously would take ~15 secs to connect when computer awoke.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Wifi works just fine here, and in fact I've never had wifi problems on any of my systems. But I tend to always use Apple routers so maybe they play nicer together.

 

[sdsvtdriver]

Update. Tried another N network and I was unable to replicate the problem. Guess that means my new router will fix it when it arrives.

Still a little screwing that I had to change my router just for this, but I already had more money than sense in the first place. So I can't really complain.

Thanks for everyone's input. Would love to know why it doesn't like my current router. It's not with the headache though right now for me.

If anyone does work this out, I'd love to hear your experience and why.

Cheers

G

is your router configured to use wireless N @ 40MHz and using a wide channel?

20MHz is junk.

 

[Mr Brainz]

My new router arrived today. Booyah.

I'm still sad I had to drop £160 on a new router when my other one was just fine for all my other Macs. But as Bewitched once said - c'est la vie. This router has a pretty new GUI and I'm a sucker for a pretty face.

 

[inlinevolvo]

My new router arrived today. Booyah.

I'm still sad I had to drop £160 on a new router when my other one was just fine for all my other Macs. But as Bewitched once said - c'est la vie. This router has a pretty new GUI and I'm a sucker for a pretty face.

Im having the exact same problem. All my devices, including a 4 year old HP are running circles around my retina macbook. I called apple and they suggested logging in with another router. I currently own a linksys. What brand did you order that your problem is now solved?

Thanks

 

[Exponent]

Try locking down to 5 GHz band.

Im having the exact same problem. All my devices, including a 4 year old HP are running circles around my retina macbook. I called apple and they suggested logging in with another router. I currently own a linksys. What brand did you order that your problem is now solved?

Thanks

I almost returned my rMBP. Had it all cleared off of data, visited the Apple Store Genius, everything.

HOWEVER (and this isn't a _good_ story)

The genius showed me the Wi-fi diagnostic utility, hidden away in /System/Library/CoreServices. It's a cool tool - it will show you a graph of signal vs. noise that the wifi system is seeing.

Indeed, on a 2.4 GHz connection, the noise seemed rather high, sometimes getting pretty darn close to the "signal" trace. When that happened you could see the transmit speed of the WIFI system go down to single digits.

I also had my old 2007 Santa Rosa MBP with me. So I pulled that out, launched Wi-Fi Diagnostics on that, and indeed, the noise trace was very low, and just about 100% constant - hanging out very near the bottom of the graph.

With this, I thought I had the justification to return the rMBP, and get either a replacement unit, or a different Mac laptop.

HOWEVER

I went around the Apple Store, opening up "Wi-Fi Diagnostics" on their other rMBPs. Guess what - the performance wasn't any better than my unit....

...So then, I opened up "Wi-Fi Diagnostics" on all the other models of Mac laptops - classic MBPs of both 15 and 13" sizes, Airs, etc. Guess what - the performance wasn't ANY better for them either!

So as I'm locked down to using Mac OS, need a laptop, and don't feel like creating and maintaining a Hackintosh, my options are limited. It appears the only solution is to buy a dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz router, configure it to create separate networks for each band, and lock the rMBP to only access the 5 GHz network.

This is asinine in a $3750 machine! The next time I run across an Apple RF Engineer, I'm going to give them a piece of my mind! (Of course, they have my money, so I'm guessing they really don't care, and will act arrogant in reply...)

To answer your question (after that vent), I just bought an Asus RT-AC66u gigabit router / firewall / VPN unit. After years of putting up with lousy Netgear firmware, I'm giving the competition a try.

 

[TLewis]

So as I'm locked down to using Mac OS, need a laptop, and don't feel like creating and maintaining a Hackintosh, my options are limited. It appears the only solution is to buy a dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz router, configure it to create separate networks for each band, and lock the rMBP to only access the 5 GHz network.

Have you verified that the 5GHz band is significantly more reliable? Looking at the ifixit retina display teardown, the antennas are along the BOTTOM of the display, directly between the hinges. I think you might get better results if you somehow elevate the hinge up off the table, and keep it away from any more metal (I imagine the metal case and display top can't be helping the signal).

 

[Slivortal]

State schooled and proud. With crap grades. And I still hold my own in an industry filled with privately educated, degree-wielding people that are occasionally threatened by me.


This response will pretty much guarantee that no one will want to help me now. Sod it. I hope my new router / OS combo will help me in a week or so. So thanks for everyone's input.

How...? I've never seen a state school go for as low as even ten times that price (average state schools around me are 25-26K/yr).

I have to agree with the comment, though. Undergraduate schools are weird in some of the best-named graduate schools can have terrible undergrad programs (TAs and all that). On the other hand, I know of very good state schools that have very active teachers that contribute more to the experience.

Name brand is kind of moot.

 

[Mr Brainz]

Have you verified that the 5GHz band is significantly more reliable? Looking at the ifixit retina display teardown, the antennas are along the BOTTOM of the display, directly between the hinges. I think you might get better results if you somehow elevate the hinge up off the table, and keep it away from any more metal (I imagine the metal case and display top can't be helping the signal).

I don't think it's just 2.4GHz vs 5GHz being better. 2.4gHz works fine on certain routers. It just seems to not like my one. Like the guy before you said - when you spaffed that much dough on a product you don't expect it to run into minor problems like that that older products of the same brand don't have.

It's Apple. Someone will always defend them no matter what unless it's with a product line the iPhone and enough people have the problem (a lá antennagate), and that's the only scale you'll get Apple giving a ****. Otherwise the response will be "buy this other product of ours, because yours is **** and that's the problem."

In response to HP dude: This is the exact router I bought from the exact place I bought it

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/12576959/art/netgear/r6300-dual-band-wireless.html

 

[inlinevolvo]

How do you guys feel about belkin routers? It's the n600, dual band n router with 2 usb ports that also works with a usb drive.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200797060565?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

 

[inlinevolvo]

Resolved WIFI Issues

I was finally able to resolve my wifi issues today, without having to buy a new router!

I took my mac to the inlaws (they have the same router I do) and i found i was getting 10x the connection speed i was at home. I also realized that her wifi was the only one in the area.

I live in a development and at any given time, my system detects 12+ routers. So, i figured maybe my issues were one of a congested frequency! I have a linkysys wr54g v1 router. I changed the channel and BAM, i'm now getting the speeds i should be.

 

[rovex]

I'm getting up to 90Mbps download speed over WiFi & haven't had any problems thus far...

Sorry that doesn't really help much

You're using an AC router i assume?

 

[TLewis]

I live in a development and at any given time, my system detects 12+ routers. So, i figured maybe my issues were one of a congested frequency! I have a linkysys wr54g v1 router. I changed the channel and BAM, i'm now getting the speeds i should be.

For 2.4GHz wifi, channels 1, 6, and 11 are the only non-overlapping frequencies (in the US, that is, not sure about you folks across the pond ). Channel 6 is probably the channel used most as the default channel, but some (rare?) installers will change the default channel to something different. (And, I assume you mean "wrt54g" instead of "wr54g", and so have you installed something like tomato, tomatousb, or ddwrt on it? You can do site surveys with those, to help you find the least congested channel.)

 

[georgia-svt]

I'm using the Belkin n600 and it's fine. I had the same problem but changes the channel from auto to a higher channel number fixed mine. I also love the usb port on the back I use it for my external HD for my itunes account.
jeff