iMac Pro iMac Pro WiFi Problems

[mcaswell]

Seeing two oddities with WiFi...


1) WiFi connection speed is extremely low. A regular 2017 iMac, a 2013 iMac, and a 2013 Mac Pro all connect to this AC network at 867mbs, while the iMac Pro connects at 24mbs.





2) That extremely slow connection speed led me to discover that the WiFi connection is taking priority over Ethernet, even though I have Ethernet set higher in the Network prefpane (it was my understanding that higher positioned networks take priority). Turning WiFi off results in Ethernet being used.




I don't normally use WiFi for connectivity... I just leave it on for the sake of AirDrop and other such stuff. I'm able to easily work around both of these problems by leaving WiFi on, but disconnecting it from my network (and unchecking "Automatically join this network" in the prefpane), but thought I'd mention it here to see if anyone else is seeing these issues.

 

[SecuritySteve]

This post scares me. You might have a defective chip if you're really seeing speeds that low on wifi.

 

[bplein]

Seeing two oddities with WiFi...


1) WiFi connection speed is extremely low. A regular 2017 iMac, a 2013 iMac, and a 2013 Mac Pro all connect to this AC network at 867mbs, while the iMac Pro connects at 24mbs.

View attachment 744919



2) That extremely slow connection speed led me to discover that the WiFi connection is taking priority over Ethernet, even though I have Ethernet set higher in the Network prefpane (it was my understanding that higher positioned networks take priority). Turning WiFi off results in Ethernet being used.

View attachment 744917


I don't normally use WiFi for connectivity... I just leave it on for the sake of AirDrop and other such stuff. I'm able to easily work around both of these problems by leaving WiFi on, but disconnecting it from my network (and unchecking "Automatically join this network" in the prefpane), but thought I'd mention it here to see if anyone else is seeing these issues.

I think it's a bug in the display of the data rate in the Mac GUI.

I show the same thing but my Unifi Controller shows that I'm connected at 351 Mbit. There is also a discrepancy with Network Utility which shows 54Mbit.

And I can download from speedtest.net at 200Mbit while the Apple Network is showing that 24Mbit.

Looks like a display bug, but doesn't affect speed.

 

[mcaswell]

Hmmm... you may be right, I may have jumped the gun. When I tried to copy a movie file this morning, it was plodding along for a while at about 3.5MB/s, until I disconnected from the WiFi network, when it then presumably started using Ethernet and sped up dramatically. That 3.5MB/s combined with the reported 24Mbit connection led me to conclude that was the problem. However, now doing some more deliberate testing just now, I do see the expected speed (60MB/s or so) when copying via WiFi.

Not sure what the slowdown was earlier... but sorry for what apparently was a false alarm!