Why is my Netgear Router not working correctly?

[bluearrow]

I have a Netgear N600 WNDR3400 dual-band router, which can transmit up to 300 Mbit/s but my max transmit rate since I upgraded to Lion is 270 even if I have my Mac right next to the router. before I would get 300. What happened?

 

[Lennyvalentin]

What happened?

Impossible to tell, with the small amount of information you've given.

First off, do you even notice any difference in performance? Unless you have several computers and regularly transfer large amounts of data between them, or have the mother of all FIOS internet connections coming into your house, you're unlikely to see any major decrease in performance. Especially since just because your wifi transceiver syncs at 300mbit/s doesn't mean you're actually getting that speed out of it.

One reason you're getting a slight decrease in link speed might be interference. Maybe there's a new wifi network nearby encroaching on "your" territory. Try switching wifi channel in your access point/router.

Also, switch your wifi network over to 5GHz operation if your router supports that, as this typically gives much greater performance and much less chance of interference; it's generally less congested because fewer devices support the 5GHz range, and there's also many more channels available.

 

[bluearrow]

There are only two other wifi signals in my area plus I changed the channel already and still get the same results. performance wise I have not seen difference but if I'm supposed to get 300 I would like to get it. Also, my wifi signal is 5ghz.

 

[Lennyvalentin]

If you see no performance difference then it doesn't matter. Wifi performance is an inexact science to begin with, getting worked up about "losing" 30mbit/s link speed when the actual performance is the same is just wasted mental energy.

 

[bluearrow]

Thank you. One final thing. How can I figure out the current speed of an ethernet connection?

 

[Lennyvalentin]

You mean wired network speed? On a mac, either the Network Utility (just switch to ethernet) or the Network applet under System Preferences (click the "Advanced" button, switch to Hardware tab) could tell you that.

Maybe there is a way to show wired network status in the menu bar like there is with wifi, I haven't succeeded, but if so you should be able to alt-click the icon for a quick and easy way to ascertain link speed. I'm not terribly down with the inner workings of OSX, I've only had a Mac since may this year. 🙂