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Why does my MBP Wireless suck???
- Thread starter phil1995
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Wireless has been great, and stable for me at this point. I actually get better signal than my previous MacBook (Plastic), and see one additional network inside my house, that I didn't before unless I took my MacBook outside.
I've got the new MBP, and the wireless is every bit as good as all the HPs and the Thinkpad I've had. I get wireless from the basement (where the AP is) all the way to the top floor in my house, with very little performance loss.
My guess would be something with the AP itself, such as in need of a firmware update.
My guess would be something with the AP itself, such as in need of a firmware update.
My self and my friend have the 2.8 MBP and both of us have noticed a 5-6Mbps limit on the wireless connection even with it right by the router. We have different routers as well. Neither of them are "n" though, it is ridiculous and at full strength signal too.
when i got my mbp the wireless also sucked. I had an old G router. went to best buy got a N router and mbp wireless works good. What kind of router do you have?
I did a major upgrade on my MBP today (4gb ram, 320gb 7200rpm drive and atheros wireless card) and the wireless issues seem to of have stopped.
I replace the broadcom card with an atheros card I purchased for $29 on Ebay. The issues with awaking from sleep mode and intermittent dropouts seem to of have dissapeared.
I will continue to test, but for now, the broadcom card seems to be the culprit. Runs much faster with the atheros card also.
I replace the broadcom card with an atheros card I purchased for $29 on Ebay. The issues with awaking from sleep mode and intermittent dropouts seem to of have dissapeared.
I will continue to test, but for now, the broadcom card seems to be the culprit. Runs much faster with the atheros card also.
@ OP: try buying a N router (I have the Linksys N and I'm totally happy with it). If you still have problems then you know it's the machine.
5-6 MByte/s is the maximum you can get on a 56 Mbit/s wlan link. The theoretical maximum is 7 MByte/s but there is an overhead, and whatever.
I have a Dlink WBR-2310 and have issues with connectivity my new MBP. Multiple times during the day airport will still say I am at full bars, but I am unable to access the web, etc. However while I'm at school I have no issues with wireless and i'm at my girlfriend's place now and have been using the wireless for a few hours straight and have no issues at all. She also has a Dlink router, but a different model than mine.
Seems odd, but who knows.
Seems odd, but who knows.
Reinstall Leopard and Dont update the Wireless Driver to Fix, heres the story:
Hey guys, this problem is pretty widespread apparently even going back before the late 2008 macbook pros.
I purchased the new macbook pro a couple of weeks ago and was loving it until i finally found myself in a situation where i needed wifi. Just like some other people are experiencing it was absoltuly terrible, dropped connection all the time, slow internet even when it was connected, etc.
So after much searching most people seemed to attribute it to driver problems, etc but no one had a definitative solution. After being frustrated things only got worse as i got the mac equivalant of the BSOD about 2 days after buying my first mac ever! I was pretty frustrated so i finally decided to just reinstall OSX and what do you know, it fixed everything. My comp runs like a dream.
Heres what you need to remember, after reinstalling leopard Apple Update is gonna do its thing and tell you to install all the newly available updates.
DO NOT install the airport xtreme wireless driver update.
From all my research on the topic while the driver that ships with the computer isnt perfect this newest driver is the one causing the most major problems. Wait for apple to release another version of the driver after this one to play it safe.
Reinstalling leopard and avoiding the new driver sorted everything out for me, im sure many comps have genuinely defective wireless cards but i suggest trying this solution before giving up. I was so sure my card was faulty the way it was performing but i was wrong.
Hey guys, this problem is pretty widespread apparently even going back before the late 2008 macbook pros.
I purchased the new macbook pro a couple of weeks ago and was loving it until i finally found myself in a situation where i needed wifi. Just like some other people are experiencing it was absoltuly terrible, dropped connection all the time, slow internet even when it was connected, etc.
So after much searching most people seemed to attribute it to driver problems, etc but no one had a definitative solution. After being frustrated things only got worse as i got the mac equivalant of the BSOD about 2 days after buying my first mac ever! I was pretty frustrated so i finally decided to just reinstall OSX and what do you know, it fixed everything. My comp runs like a dream.
Heres what you need to remember, after reinstalling leopard Apple Update is gonna do its thing and tell you to install all the newly available updates.
DO NOT install the airport xtreme wireless driver update.
From all my research on the topic while the driver that ships with the computer isnt perfect this newest driver is the one causing the most major problems. Wait for apple to release another version of the driver after this one to play it safe.
Reinstalling leopard and avoiding the new driver sorted everything out for me, im sure many comps have genuinely defective wireless cards but i suggest trying this solution before giving up. I was so sure my card was faulty the way it was performing but i was wrong.
Is it safe to say the Broadcom card in your MBP was the culprit and maybe another Broadcom card i.e. a replacement card may have produced similar results the Atheros replacement or are the Broadcom cards just subpar overall?
My late 2008 MBP's wireless is also sucking. Really really badly, I might add. Especially after the update last week, which I don't think had anything to do with wireless. I've had awful problems in my apartment with my Apple machines and wireless, and none of my other wireless devices have had any problems.
I started out with an Airport Express as my router, which was absolutely awful. Combined with the fact that I had DSL, I couldn't stream video or do anything remotely useful aside from browsing which was frequently a chore. If my Xbox 360 was turned on, I couldn't even browse websites, I'd just get timeout errors.
I then decided that since I couldn't even stream video with my DSL connection (which was free) I'd go ahead and pay for Comcast and go with cable. When it first got turned on, everything was fine but if my 360 was in-use, browsing slowed up considerably. Granted more network traffic *will* slow things up a bit, but nowhere near as much as I've been seeing. I've since switched my cable modem over to a cable jack that was close to my 360, hard-wired that into the router and I could finally browse moderately while my Xbox was on.
Now today, after doing the latest software update, with no other devices connected, I'm getting everything from the signal varying widely, to having the rest of my updates (iTunes 8.02) timeout after 0.5-1.5MB. When plugged-in via ethernet, everything works swimmingly.
My possible culprits that I'll be working on tonight:
- Changing the channel on my router to see if there's just too many neighboring routers on the same channel
- Trying a few of the random fixes I've seen here and on the Apple support pages
If none of this works, I'll be headed to the Apple store for an AirPort replacement. Any more ideas?
I started out with an Airport Express as my router, which was absolutely awful. Combined with the fact that I had DSL, I couldn't stream video or do anything remotely useful aside from browsing which was frequently a chore. If my Xbox 360 was turned on, I couldn't even browse websites, I'd just get timeout errors.
I then decided that since I couldn't even stream video with my DSL connection (which was free) I'd go ahead and pay for Comcast and go with cable. When it first got turned on, everything was fine but if my 360 was in-use, browsing slowed up considerably. Granted more network traffic *will* slow things up a bit, but nowhere near as much as I've been seeing. I've since switched my cable modem over to a cable jack that was close to my 360, hard-wired that into the router and I could finally browse moderately while my Xbox was on.
Now today, after doing the latest software update, with no other devices connected, I'm getting everything from the signal varying widely, to having the rest of my updates (iTunes 8.02) timeout after 0.5-1.5MB. When plugged-in via ethernet, everything works swimmingly.
My possible culprits that I'll be working on tonight:
- Changing the channel on my router to see if there's just too many neighboring routers on the same channel
- Trying a few of the random fixes I've seen here and on the Apple support pages
If none of this works, I'll be headed to the Apple store for an AirPort replacement. Any more ideas?
You are correct, a replacement broadcom card may have produced similiar results. However, I remember reading an article right after purchasing my macbook pro, that referred to problems with the broadcom cards that Apple would not admit to. My experience seems to backup that theory.
Its just my opinion, but I am leaning to the Broadcom cards being incompatible with atheros based routers.
Like I say, this is just strictly my opinion, and i have no evidence to support that.
Early 2k8 MBP here running off latest AEBS. Big problems with wireless since running the 004 update.
Conversely, reinstalling Leopard, running all the updates, but not installing any updates for the wireless still left me in a state where things would drop off randomly (anywhere from a few hours to a few minutes). I updated to the 002 update, still issues. Updated to 004 again, amazingly, things have been mostly rock solid since yesterday morning. Only one time have I lost connection, which has always been the case pretty much.
Note that in between running the updates I exhausted all the normal suggested things, such as rebuilding the network profile, deleting the .plist files (and rebuilding those in safe mode), resetting the AEBS to factory defaults, messing with Little Snitch, etc. I must have spent at least 40-50 hours getting things solid again.