Strange wireless behaviour..

[cipher29]

I'm having some strange issues with the wireless on my Macbook Pro and curious to see if anyone else is having similar problems.

I have a Unibody Macbook Pro with a Airport Extreme access point.

If I have a fresh boot, on SpeedTest via wireless I'm getting roughly 25mb/s down. If I use my laptop for a couple hours and try again, it drops to about 1-2mb/s! If I have plugged in via ethernet, I'm constantly 25mb/s regardless of how long I'm on my laptop.

I initially thought this could be wireless congestion in my area, so, I went to 802.11A with the exact same results.

I tried connected to a Linksys wireless router on 802.11g with the exact same results, so, I know 100% it is my Macbook and not my networking (I have a dell laptop that does not suffer any wireless issues).

The odd thing is, if I reboot, I'm back to 25mb/s for awhile. It's very frustrating and I'm not quite sure if I'm actually having a hardware issue or not.

Thoughts?

 

[phishindsn]

Is this a personal wireless? How many devices connecting through it?

When you say at restart I am assuming that on reboot you get good speed, then as the day goes by your connection goes down.

Have you determined if there are services or applications that are connecting in the background?

 

[iLog.Genius]

Try a new user and see if your connection stays consistent. Also try and trash the com.apple.airport.preferences.plist from your /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder. You will need to enter in your login password. Restart and see if it helped. I know I had a similar problem and that cured it.

The other option is to reset the AirPort Extreme and reconfigure your network again. It wouldn't be the first time where AirPort would mess up and provide inconsistent connections.

 

[mstrze]

Could channel interference cause problems like this?

 

[cipher29]

phishindsn: Yes, personal wireless, only device connecting to it is my MBP. Yes, restart being a reboot. I usually get good speeds for about an hour. Nothing funky running in the background that I can see



iLog.Genius: Good suggestion.. I will try this and report back! Definitely not the Airport Extreme as I'm also having the exact issue on my Linksys wireless router.


mstrze: Not likely.. I was running in 2.4Ghz mode (802.11B/G) and I'm also having this issue with 5.8Ghz(802.11A). There are no other 802.11A AP's anywhere around my house that I can see.


Thanks everyone for responding! I'll report back with iLog's suggestion of deleting com.apple.airport.preferences.plist ..

 

[cipher29]

Update: Still getting terrible speeds

 

[cipher29]

Yet another update... Running windows 7 in bootcamp and I have no issues.. This is defiantly a macosx issue... No one has seen this before?

 

[Moocher]

I haven't seen this before, but run Activity Monitor to see what's running. Quit one program at a time and see if things inprove. Quit your browser and run a different one. In other words, once you know what is and has been running, try experimenting until you find what is causing the problem.

Have you ever run something like Onyx to clear caches?


Mooch

 

[cipher29]

Ok, my problem appears to have resolved itself... Last night I did the following and it fixed it, but, I'm not quite sure what piece fixed it:

1) I disabled IPv6 for the wireless adapter
2) I removed every single wireless access point from my known AP's.
3) I set to remember networks this computer has joined
4) rebooted


My wireless has been fast all day today back up to 27mbps download instead of 1.2mbps .

I'm happy.