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Airport vs MBP 802.11n - anyone seen above 120Mb?

T

twynne

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 21, 2006
807
46
London, UK
I upgraded to Airport Extreme (802.11n) several months ago, and after buying a new SR MBP I expected to see much better wireless performance. Sadly I never seem to be able to achieve more than a 130Mb wireless connection speed (as reported by Network Utility), and never higher than 80% signal strength (as reported by iStumbler) even with the MBP sitting next to the base station.

I've reconfigured my network so that the Airport Extreme is in 'N-only' mode in the 5Ghz band. The only attached devices are the new MBP and AppleTV, both reporting a full signal.

Has anyone with Apple 'pre-N' equipment seen greater than 130Mb connection speed? Does your SR MBP, used with Airport Extreme base station ever report greater than 80% signal strength?

If the answers are negative to both of the above, would you expect this to be due to the pre-N nature of the equipment, or some hardware issue with either AEbs or MBP?

I've posted this to Apple discussion forums, but thought it worth asking opinions here as well as there seems to be a bit more experience here.

Thanks all,

Tom
 
I've been able to get 300+MB using the same settings as you but only my MBP was connected as its the only N device in the house. Maybe you have a defective unit?. Then again maybe you should reset the base station and retry?
 
daneoni said:
I've been able to get 300+MB using the same settings as you but only my MBP was connected as its the only N device in the house. Maybe you have a defective unit?. Then again maybe you should reset the base station and retry?
Click to expand...

Tried that - spent about 1.5 hours on phone with Apple support where he attempted a reset and lost all of my settings. There are other networks operating nearby, but they're all 2.4Ghz so I wouldn't think they would interfere in any way.

Are you on a SR MBP or the previous C2D?
 
twynne said:
Tried that - spent about 1.5 hours on phone with Apple support where he attempted a reset and lost all of my settings. There are other networks operating nearby, but they're all 2.4Ghz so I wouldn't think they would interfere in any way.

Are you on a SR MBP or the previous C2D?
Click to expand...

Previous C2D
 
daneoni said:
WPA/WPA 2, since i switched to the N with B/G compatibility
Click to expand...

Same here - I'm stumped! :confused:

I'm planning to take it into my local store this afternoon to get their views. Maybe they can test it with one of their routers to see how fast it connects.

I'll post back resuls later.
 
twynne said:
Same here - I'm stumped! :confused:

I'm planning to take it into my local store this afternoon to get their views. Maybe they can test it with one of their routers to see how fast it connects.

I'll post back resuls later.
Click to expand...

I checked my Network and I'm only on 130mb too. My MBP is 6ft away from the Airport Extreme. Oh and I'm running it in bridge mode which supposedly should rule out this bottleneck

How does one tell if the airport in the MacBook Pro has been upgraded to "n"?
 
srexy said:
I checked my Network and I'm only on 130mb too. My MBP is 6ft away from the Airport Extreme. Oh and I'm running it in bridge mode which supposedly should rule out this bottleneck

How does one tell if the airport in the MacBook Pro has been upgraded to "n"?
Click to expand...

haha if ur getting 130mb then its at 'n'. it wouldnt be doing that ag 'g'. there must be something going wrong.

to check if its 'n' go to network utility (located in utilities) and it will tell you in the 1st tab.

what channels are being used by you guys?? 11 is the recommended channel as it has the best speeds..check that.
 
srexy said:
I checked my Network and I'm only on 130mb too. My MBP is 6ft away from the Airport Extreme. Oh and I'm running it in bridge mode which supposedly should rule out this bottleneck

How does one tell if the airport in the MacBook Pro has been upgraded to "n"?
Click to expand...

I'm in bridge mode as well. I believe if you look in Network Utility and the model shows 'n' then it has been upgraded. Others here may be able to confirm this.
 
DoFoT9 said:
haha if ur getting 130mb then its at 'n'. it wouldnt be doing that ag 'g'. there must be something going wrong.

to check if its 'n' go to network utility (located in utilities) and it will tell you in the 1st tab.

what channels are being used by you guys?? 11 is the recommended channel as it has the best speeds..check that.
Click to expand...

The only option for channel on mine (set to 'N-only' 5GHz) is Automatic. If I'm not mistaken channel 11 is a 2.4GHz channel.
 
Hi,
just got my new MacBookPro and Extreme Station and would like to check the speed. Ho do you measure the actual speed?
Best regards - Christoph
 
Thanks for the hint to the Network utility - I´m also "only" at 130MBit

My settings on the Apple Extreme Station are firmware 7.1, it makes no difference if I´m going to 2,4 or 5 GHz. I set the Channel to automatic.

I´m wondering if the country that we have to select in the setup process has something to do with it. Here in Germany the fastest possible network wouldn´t be allowed because of interference... (but I would still be interested...)

Maybe I should set it up again with USA? Or what did you guys do? What should be the fastest setting?

Best regards - Christoph
 
twynne said:
I upgraded to Airport Extreme (802.11n) several months ago, and after buying a new SR MBP I expected to see much better wireless performance. Sadly I never seem to be able to achieve more than a 130Mb wireless connection speed (as reported by Network Utility), and never higher than 80% signal strength (as reported by iStumbler) even with the MBP sitting next to the base station.
Click to expand...

You probably already have, but being *too* close to the base station might not be the best idea. Being too close give a much more intense radio signal and will actually degrade the quality of the reception.

Think of it like being at a huge concert and having your head right up to the main speakers.
 
Oh well. I'm still thrilled at having my external hdd connected and streaming my itunes library from it. I played Sicko last night from it too w/no noticeable degradation in picture quality. The only thing that did bug me was having to wait 12 minutes to transfer a 700mb file to the fat32 drive earlier. I'm not sure what caused it but it was dragging weed.
 
as I mentioned before the country in the setup seems to be also a big part. I configured it new with a different country than Germany (I took Italy) and now I´m able to get 300 MBit with the 5 GHz and 130 MBit with the 2.4 GHz. With the Germany setting also 5 GHz has been only 130 MBit.

Best regards - Christoph
 
From the Apple site:

The following countries do not allow wide-channel operation: Austria, Estonia, Germany, Japan, Latvia, Slovakia, Spain, United Kingdom.
 
Ok - to the OP. You've probably done this already either on your own or w/Apple but I ran across it inadvertently and my Link Speed is now 300mb

In your airport utility make sure that the radio mode is set to 802.11n only - that's what got my speed up.

Edit - I realize that this is pretty elementary (and I'm sure you already ruled it out) but sometimes the solutions are easy to overlook :)
 

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I have 300 MBit with both of the 5 GHz settings. (After the change of the country!) I´m pretty sure that this is also the case with the Topic-starter who comes from the UK - where the double channel mode is also forbidden.
 
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