M3 MacBook Air slow WLAN & LAN speeds - [solved]

[racingbull]

Hi,
so, now I have it (finally): the all new M3 MacBook Air, Space gray, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
the short review coming from an Intel MacBook Pro (and a DELL 13'' XPS): simply awesome!

the shortcoming: I've noticed extremely slow downloading speeds - not even a fifth I'm getting on my iPhone 11 Pro. I've tried to connect it through Ethernet (Dell mobile docking station USB-C Dell, DA305) but to no avail: download speeds at first were about the half I'm getting on my Dell and then lost the connection entirely...

Does anyone have any idea if there might be some settings I'm getting wrong?

Thanks in advance.
Christian

 

[casperes1996]

What speeds are you concretely getting?
Also
Option click the WiFi icon in the menu bar for expanded details and send a screenshot

 

[racingbull]

Speedtest by Ookla gets me 350 Mbps
activity monitors gives me a mere 399 KB/s.
so downloads of my photo library (photos.app) lasts basically forever ...

 

[halledise]

my speeds are pretty much identical to yours (i'm in AU) on M2 Air.
my plan is 100 down/20 up and them's the speed i'm getting
have you tried restarting and see if things speed up for you with your downloads?

 

[Bigwaff]

Speedtest by Ookla gets me 350 Mbps
activity monitors gives me a mere 399 KB/s.

If you run Speedtest on your MBA then that is how fast your MBA WiFi speeds are capable of based on your router and ISP service. Activity Monitor is showing what is happening at the moment. Just because your connection to Ookla servers is fast doesn’t mean your connection to Apples servers is fast. Are you experiencing slow connections to other services?

 

[krspkbl]

What internet speed are you meant to get?

My M3 Air has no problem doing 270Mb/s over WiFi which is as fast as my internet will go. Well, sometimes it can hit 280Mb/s but my advertised speed is 250Mb/s so there is no problem.

Either the internet adapter in your Mac is faulty, there is some config issue on your home modem/router or ISP, or Apple's servers are slow.

Open activity monitor and see what speeds you get when trying to download large files. If you're just browsing the web or downloading pictures then your speed is not going to go too high.

If you think your Mac is faulty then take it to the Apple store and they will replace it.

 

[Ruggy]

Is this just happening with your photo library?
In which case where is your photo library? Is this in iCloud or are you transferring images from another computer via the internet?
If the latter happens to be the case then you are probably limited by the upload speed of your service provider which is usually tiny compared to the download speed.
For testing your internet connection speed the best is fast.com as it doesn't make up the result.

 

[racingbull]

my speeds are pretty much identical to yours (i'm in AU) on M2 Air.
my plan is 100 down/20 up and them's the speed i'm getting
have you tried restarting and see if things speed up for you with your downloads?

unfortunately not (yet)... it still is slower than my Dell, currently. Maybe once everything is downloaded also in the background it will speed up. *fingers crossed*

 

[racingbull]

If you run Speedtest on your MBA then that is how fast your MBA WiFi speeds are capable of based on your router and ISP service. Activity Monitor is showing what is happening at the moment. Just because your connection to Ookla servers is fast doesn’t mean your connection to Apples servers is fast. Are you experiencing slow connections to other services?

this actually makes a lot of sense ... so the main issue is the connection to iCloud? Do you think the settings (encrypt everything, internet relay and firewall) are slowing the connection? Once back home, I'll check out how download from OneDrive is...

 

[racingbull]

What internet speed are you meant to get?

My M3 Air has no problem doing 270Mb/s over WiFi which is as fast as my internet will go. Well, sometimes it can hit 280Mb/s but my advertised speed is 250Mb/s so there is no problem.

Either the internet adapter in your Mac is faulty, there is some config issue on your home modem/router or ISP, or Apple's servers are slow.

Open activity monitor and see what speeds you get when trying to download large files. If you're just browsing the web or downloading pictures then your speed is not going to go too high.

If you think your Mac is faulty then take it to the Apple store and they will replace it.

My line does 800Mbps when wired ... maybe the Dell adapters are not playing along well, I will see if I can get another adapter...

I will monitor and, hopefully, it plays out nicely in the end...

 

[racingbull]

Is this just happening with your photo library?
In which case where is your photo library? Is this in iCloud or are you transferring images from another computer via the internet?
If the latter happens to be the case then you are probably limited by the upload speed of your service provider which is usually tiny compared to the download speed.
For testing your internet connection speed the best is fast.com as it doesn't make up the result.

it is actually iCloud ....

 

[HouseLannister]

iCloud private relay will indeed slow down your connection. Sometimes it's just a little, but sometimes it is incredibly dramatic. Your mileage will vary.

 

[Viridian5]

My advice is to first try a different WiFi network. Neighbors, workplace, library, etc. Then if that doesn’t show any changes, I would do a soft reset first, followed by factory reset if that doesn’t work. Annoying for sure, but it would allow you to bypass any specific resolutions. If none of that changes anything you may need to get a replacement.

 

[halledise]

run Diagnostics

 

[racingbull]

so, here are my two findings of this week:

1. I've got download rates of 400-500 Mbps from Microsoft servers downloading from OneDrive, nice.
   it was definitely an issue of iCloud.
2. The issues I had connecting with Dell hubs might be related to Sonoma 14.4 https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/13/macos-sonoma-14-4-usb-hub-issues-reported/

Thanks a lot for your interest and support, I really appreciated it!

 

[Renderdog]

I was getting 1/3 speed on ethernet when I first plugged in my new M3 Air. Rebooting the router brought speeds up to my service limit (300Mbps)

 

[racingbull]

I was getting 1/3 speed on ethernet when I first plugged in my new M3 Air. Rebooting the router brought speeds up to my service limit (300Mbps)

I had to erase the hard drive and re-install Sonoma from scratch. Wi-Fi is now working fine.

However, I keep on getting socket errors when I use a wired connection (ethernet via a Dell mobile hub). I hope the next update of Sonoma will fix that as well. Otherwise, these are the speeds I'm getting on the wire (the one time it didn't give me socket errors)...

 

[Renderdog]

Back down to 100Mbps ethernet speed. Maybe my (100') cable is borderline, but it's rated for 600MHz bandwidth.

 

[racingbull]

Back down to 100Mbps ethernet speed. Maybe my (100') cable is borderline, but it's rated for 600MHz bandwidth.

My speeds are back to normal whenever I switch off Private Cloud Relay. The wired connection gives me plain socket error… will try another cable / hub ….

Uff… it’s a bit bothering, I’ll tell you.

 

[KhunJay]

the shortcoming: I've noticed extremely slow downloading speeds - not even a fifth I'm getting on my iPhone 11 Pro. I've tried to connect it through Ethernet (Dell mobile docking station USB-C Dell, DA305) but to no avail: download speeds at first were about the half I'm getting on my Dell and then lost the connection entirely...

Doesn't sound right.
Try to turn off your modem + router and unplug them....wait for about a minute and restart.
That triggers a reset.

Your M3 MBA is capable of Wifi6E speeds but it's al dependent on your router if it supports.

I just got a wifi6 router on a 250MBPS plan and I get 255 mbps on wireless. Haven't tried ethernet.
My 2018MBP is only capable of 802.11ac (5Ghz)

what router do you have? Wifi 6 or earlier? Play around in its settings with 80 and 160 MHz and see what works better.
I use 20mhz for 2.4 and 80mhz for 5Ghz. No problems.

On both router and laptop DNS settings choose google dns (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4)
Do not let your ISP auto select the DNS

 

[racingbull]

Doesn't sound right.
Try to turn off your modem + router and unplug them....wait for about a minute and restart.
That triggers a reset.

Your M3 MBA is capable of Wifi6E speeds but it's al dependent on your router if it supports.

I just got a wifi6 router on a 250MBPS plan and I get 255 mbps on wireless. Haven't tried ethernet.
My 2018MBP is only capable of 802.11ac (5Ghz)

what router do you have? Wifi 6 or earlier? Play around in its settings with 80 and 160 MHz and see what works better.
I use 20mhz for 2.4 and 80mhz for 5Ghz. No problems.

On both router and laptop DNS settings choose google dns (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4)
Do not let your ISP auto select the DNS

Hey, thanks for your reply.
I figured it’s private cloud relay concerning Wi-Fi.
I have a Wi-Fi mesh network and I get on all my devices around 550-650Mbps (including the m3 MBA without private cloud relay).

 

[racingbull]

OK, one last post.... the sockets error when connecting a DELL mobile hub have been solved once the drivers of the (mobile) hub / docking (station) are being updated: visit the DELL support page and download and install via a Windows PC.

solution: update the DELL drivers of the docking stations