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USB2 Wifi only getting 36mb/s?

O

orestes1984

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 10, 2005
1,000
4
Australia
So I bought a USB2 Wifi adapter and it only gets 36mb/s :mad:

xpu1lg.png


It's effectively useless at these speeds, it means I can't use it with my Apple TV at all... What's going on? It's supposed to be 802.11n...

34fiqz7.png


Clearly its not, I thought USB2 was supposed to be 480mbit a second I should be able to do 802.11n with USB2. Is there anyway to force 802.11n on a Mac?
 
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USB 2.0 is rated 480*Mbit/s (60*MB/s) per controller and is shared amongst all attached devices.
Although typical hi-speed USB devices can be written to at rates around 25–30*MB/s, and read from at rates of 30–42*MB/s, according to routine testing done by CNet. So you getting around 36 MB/s which is a read speed is about what you should be expecting and there is nothing wrong with your mac or USB wifi adaptor. Hopes this helps :)
 
Thanks... I screwed up my calculation, that seems about right... I've got it playing now without stuttering.
 
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orestes1984 said:
So I bought a USB2 Wifi adapter and it only gets 36mb/s :mad:

It's effectively useless at these speeds, it means I can't use it with my Apple TV at all... What's going on? It's supposed to be 802.11n...

Clearly its not, I thought USB2 was supposed to be 480mbit a second I should be able to do 802.11n with USB2. Is there anyway to force 802.11n on a Mac?
Click to expand...

According to your second screenshot you are using WEP. Aside from WEP being more or less the same thing as no protection at all, the maximum transfer rate for 802.11n using WEP authentication is 54 Mbps as specified in the IEEE 802.11n standard. (Related reading)

chibiterasu said:
USB 2.0 is rated 480*Mbit/s (60*MB/s) per controller and is shared amongst all attached devices.
Although typical hi-speed USB devices can be written to at rates around 25–30*MB/s, and read from at rates of 30–42*MB/s, according to routine testing done by CNet. So you getting around 36 MB/s which is a read speed is about what you should be expecting and there is nothing wrong with your mac or USB wifi adaptor. Hopes this helps :)
Click to expand...

No. USB WiFi and USB mass storage are not quite the same. The link speed most definitively is not 36 MB/s. Believe it or not, the label says "Mbit" for a reason.
 
I didn't realise WEP would limit traffic like that... I realise its not secure, but I don't live in an area where I'm likely to get hacked and I was just testing this to make sure it worked. eBay purchases are very hit and miss.

Anyway, it's now running WPA2 and is running much faster, thank you :)
 
chibiterasu said:
USB 2.0 is rated 480*Mbit/s (60*MB/s) per controller and is shared amongst all attached devices.
Although typical hi-speed USB devices can be written to at rates around 25–30*MB/s, and read from at rates of 30–42*MB/s, according to routine testing done by CNet. So you getting around 36 MB/s which is a read speed is about what you should be expecting and there is nothing wrong with your mac or USB wifi adaptor. Hopes this helps :)
Click to expand...

orestes1984 said:
Thanks... I screwed up my calculation, that seems about right... I've got it playing now without stuttering.
Click to expand...

I use the same dongle (my AP Extreme kept forcing kernel panics), and I typically get 52MB/s.
 
Hi there,

That looks to be 36 Mbps, as in 36 megabit/s not 36 megabyte/s.

Most cable ISPs have a 15-25 megabit/s rating.
DSL is even slower around 6-10 megabit/s.

Unless you have fiber to the home (like Verizon Fios which is 50 megabit/s I believe), you probably won't notice a difference.

May I suggest to use your internal AirPort card and run a bandwidth test on http://www.bandwidthplace.com for example.
 
PerformaGuy said:
That looks to be 36 Mbps, as in 36 megabit/s not 36 megabyte/s.
Click to expand...

Yes, you are completely right. Definitively megabit. Like the OP actually wrote, and that I've already pointed out to the ones confusing the units. :)

Unless you have fiber to the home (like Verizon Fios which is 50 megabit/s I believe), you probably won't notice a difference.
Click to expand...

Unless of course you want to communicate locally, like streaming from a computer to an AppleTV just like the OP wanted. In that case you will notice a difference...

I'm tempted to ask if you actually bothered to read the thread, but that would probably sound hostile and somewhat rude, so I won't. :p
 
I've rewired my network to the Apple TV. The server is now using the Wifi to call home to the mothership and I've gone via CAT5 to the Apple TV. I'm now running internet connection sharing on the server which is doing routing to the Apple TV. Caching is now occuring over a LAN rather than a WAN connection and the speeds are much improved.

At 100mbit/s I can now cache a movie on the local server to my Apple TV in a matter of minutes.
 
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