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Wifi speed 50% of Macbook

mcdj

mcdj

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jul 10, 2007
8,972
4,225
NYC
I realize this has been discussed to the gills.

Up until now I haven't paid much attention to the wifi signal on my iPad at home. It never seemed blazingly fast at home (LTE outdoors is usually faster!), but it was never blatantly slow enough to check the speeds against my 20mbps connection.

But today I upgraded my Time Warner cable to 50mbps. I expected to see a major boost on my iPad. I have not.

I have 2 AEBS, in extend mode. I connect both my Macbook Pro 13" and my iPad to the extended 5gHz AEBS, while the main base station is in the next room, not far away.

On my Macbook Pro 13", connected to my 5gHz AEBS, I get in the high 30s to mid 40s download. On my iPad, connected to the same network, running the same test from the same server, sitting in the same spot, I get 20 down if I'm lucky...usually just the high teens. Oddly, on all my devices, I get the full advertised upload speed of 5mbps, and often more.

Granted, 15-20mbps is fine for most stuff I do with the iPad, but I'm paying pretty dearly for this 50mb connection and it seems a shame not to be able to get anywhere near it with my iPad, especially since I know the iPad can do at least the high 30s (haven't seen faster than that).

My iPhone 4S, connected to the main base in the next room, at 2.4gHz, regularly gets 25mbps, testing from the same spot as the MB and iPad.

The question is, should I just live with it? I realize there are some who can't get anywhere near the speeds I'm getting with their iPad. I also have an acceptable screen after multiple exchanges/returns during the weeks after launch. So I hesitate to rock the boat in search of a better unit in terms of wifi.
 
kristoffer4 said:
I think it is because the macbook has more antennas and stronger antennas.
I see the same thing here.
Click to expand...

On LTE, I've seen 38mbps. You'd think I could at least get 30mbps via wifi sitting right next to the router being fed 50mbps. Guess it's a different antenna...?
 
Last edited:
mcdj said:
On LTE, I've seen 38mbps. You'd think I could at least get 30mbps via wifi sitting right next to the router being fed 50mbps. Guess it's a different antenna...?
Click to expand...

Krist is completely right.

iPad has one single antenna, where as MB has two MIMO antenna's. On iPad, the top speed is 150mbps, however, you can get 300mbps (the max speed for 802.11n) on the MB. Therefore, iPad is about 50% slower than MB.
 
Likewise, my old old iDevices only hit 4-5 on WiFi while my 4S can do almost three times of that.

Simply due to technology used in the devices, I think.
 
dchao said:
Krist is completely right.

iPad has one single antenna, where as MB has two MIMO antenna's. On iPad, the top speed is 150mbps, however, you can get 300mbps (the max speed for 802.11n) on the MB. Therefore, iPad is about 50% slower than MB.
Click to expand...

I'm getting 30+ on my connection. If I knew how upload a screen cap of the test from my iPad, I would show you guys
 
mgsnat75 said:
I'm getting 30+ on my connection. If I knew how upload a screen cap of the test from my iPad, I would show you guys
Click to expand...

Let me clarify.

150/300mbps is the link speed on the WiFi, it is the speed in which the raw ethernet packets are transmitted, taking no account of any network overhead. In practice, one would never hit that speed. The actually transfer speed will depend on so many factors.
 
It's buried on the Apple support forums somewhere but there's a discussion where an ex-Apple engineer (alleged) suggests going into your router and disabling QOS. I did that and my iPad speeds have now hit my bandwidth cap. Doesn't work with all routers, however.
 
I have a 6mbps connection, sucks, can't even stream 720p on YouTube without constant buffering.
 
I have the same results between my laptop and iPad in the same room as the router. When I go to the other side of the house, I still have about 80% of the connection on my laptop but my iPad consistently drops the connection and I have to reconnect. I have had the problem with all of my iPads so just assumed it uses a crappy antenna.
 
I have a 100Mbps download connection to the internet, yet my iPad (3rd generation) is only able to download at 30Mbps from this connection. As was already stated, this is because the iPad only has one WiFi antenna, so it is not able to take advantage of MIMO.

The new laptops have 3 antennas and are able to connect at 450Mbps.
 
I would buy a better router if your having issues. My setup is a netgear wndr 4500 n900 router and my iPad is on the 5ghz frequency. I previously had a dlink dir 655 and it made a huge difference when it came to speed and wireless coverage. If you guys have entry level routers (ie, $40 or less) then that could be the problem otherwise check your router settings.
 
Contrary to what others are saying here -- The iPad is only capable of 802.11n speeds up at 65Mbps. This is the Link speed, not the actual throughput, which will max out at roughly half that in real world uses.

I've personally found the iPad gets slightly better speeds in 2.4Ghz than 5Ghz mode, but really, you won't reliably see speeds over 30Mbps on WiFi.

Besides, there really isn't much worth doing at speeds that fast on an iPad -- The CPU and Flash are really not capable of speeds much faster than that anyway, and even 1080p HD Video is easily streamed at under 10Mbps.
 
what modem/router did they give you? are you using a different router than the included modem/router combo.

I have timewarner wideband and can get 50mbps on my ipad easy. Sometimes 60mpbs during the wee hours.
 
this may sound crazy, but in my case, when i set the router to n the download speed of ipad and iphone goes below 20kbps. but when i change the "n" to "b" inmediatly goes all the way up to 350-450 kbps on both devices. whats up with that ?
 
BFizzzle said:
what modem/router did they give you? are you using a different router than the included modem/router combo.

I have timewarner wideband and can get 50mbps on my ipad easy. Sometimes 60mpbs during the wee hours.
Click to expand...

You could save a bunch of money by having your own router. And own wireless router. No sense paying cable company $7 a month, or whatever.
 
Is this also why AirPlay Mirroring on iPad is so ridiculously slow when trying to shoot YouTube from iPad to TV?
 
mcdj said:
I'm pretty sure you don't pay $100/mo for that connection, so bah indeed.
Click to expand...

I most certainly don't. I wish these providers would get speeds faster than 6Mbps for $45/month. That Moore's Law apparently has nothing to do with affordable Internet speeds.
 
I have comcast "blast" connection

iPad 3 - 34.14 down, 6.22 up
Macbook Pro - 35.62 down, 5.96 up

Every test with the Macbook is always the same in same location - given +- .10
iPad varies +- 2-3

No complaints at all...
 
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