Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New Mac Mini ethernet vs. wireless, wireless is faster?!?

J

jjahshik32

macrumors 603
Original poster
Sep 4, 2006
5,366
52
This is weird, it seems loading webpages and downloading a lot of files at the same time, I thought the ethernet would be the fastest but its not.

This is very strange and my wireless on the mini is so much faster in loading webpages (no more inbetween stops) and its just overall faster.

It seems like using ethernet slowed down my mini like it was doing some tedious work to use the mini's ethernet capabilities or something.

Anyone else experiencing this? I've also tweaked with a lot of settings under ethernet, got the right ip address for it with the right port as well.
 
jjahshik32 said:
This is weird, it seems loading webpages and downloading a lot of files at the same time, I thought the ethernet would be the fastest but its not.

This is very strange and my wireless on the mini is so much faster in loading webpages (no more inbetween stops) and its just overall faster.

It seems like using ethernet slowed down my mini like it was doing some tedious work to use the mini's ethernet capabilities or something.

Anyone else experiencing this? I've also tweaked with a lot of settings under ethernet, got the right ip address for it with the right port as well.
Click to expand...

I've noticed the this with my mini too. When connected to an ethernet cable, internet activities were significantly slower than on my PC. When connected wirelessly, I noticed a bump in speed.
 
Wow that's pretty bizarre it has Gigabit ethernet. Now I'm taking a stab in the dark here but I'm guessing that you didn't make sure to use cat-5e or better cabling to ensure gigabit connections.

Also how many users are on your wireless network when doing these tests? That is wireless's main issue it doesn't handle the load of multiple people as well as ethernet can. So you will see a stronger performance drop when there are a lot of users.
 
I'm using cat 5 cables (I just bought them new just a month ago). Also there are 4 computers in the house using wireless.

I dont know what it is but seems like the mac mini cant handle the ethernet or something. Not sure how to explain it except that when I have the ethernet plugged into my router webpages seems to have a 1-2 second lag before it loads.

Actually slowing my mac mini down to some degree. Now using wireless, I'm downloading an 8gb file from unison and seems to have alot less latency while downloading and surfing the net.
 
jjahshik32 said:
I'm using cat 5 cables (I just bought them new just a month ago). Also there are 4 computers in the house using wireless.

I dont know what it is but seems like the mac mini cant handle the ethernet or something. Not sure how to explain it except that when I have the ethernet plugged into my router webpages seems to have a 1-2 second lag before it loads.

Actually slowing my mac mini down to some degree. Now using wireless, I'm downloading an 8gb file from unison and seems to have alot less latency while downloading and surfing the net.
Click to expand...
That is odd as both ethernet and 802.11n are much faster than domestic internet connections. Something is not right. What about internal transfers to other computers in the house?
 
If you run ethernet cable close by and parallel to power cable you would get interference.
 
flopticalcube said:
That is odd as both ethernet and 802.11n are much faster than domestic internet connections. Something is not right. What about internal transfers to other computers in the house?
Click to expand...

I havnt messed around with transfers inside my house. I dont really file share anything between computers.

But I've been testing out my ethernet and wireless and everytime wireless seems to keep my mac mini running much faster overall.
 
Transfer the same size file from another machine in the home over both wireless and the wired link and report on the transfer rate and time to completion, that should answer this.

Another possibility is that the gig-e NIC has a different set of firewall rules, etc, running on it than the wireless.
 
Well I just tested this myself by running back to back tests with the wired and wireless ports on my 09 Mac Mini.

I ran a speed test with DSL Reports and the results were consistently 10-20% faster with the wired connection than the wireless.

So, if you're seeing notably faster speeds, etc, with your wired connection I would be concerned about a problem with your network switch, router, cable, or a bad NIC on the Mini.

There should be a utility for OS X that will give you collisions, etc, if you are taking errors on the wired LAN interface into the Mini, but unfortunately I do not know what it is.
 
I found the culprit! I looked under system preferences and had to click on manual for all 1000mbps.

Also I had to go into my dlink router and change from "auto" to 1000mbps only wired lan. Fixed the problem right away.

Now websites feel the same as when I used it wireless but definitely is much faster than before. Havnt tried streaming things yet but I can tell that its at 1000mbps now.

Now can someone explain what MTU is? Its set standard at 1500 but maximum of 9000?
 
jjahshik32 said:
I found the culprit! I looked under system preferences and had to click on manual for all 1000mbps.

Also I had to go into my dlink router and change from "auto" to 1000mbps only wired lan. Fixed the problem right away.

Now websites feel the same as when I used it wireless but definitely is much faster than before. Havnt tried streaming things yet but I can tell that its at 1000mbps now.

Now can someone explain what MTU is? Its set standard at 1500 but maximum of 9000?
Click to expand...

MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit. The normal MTU for ethernet is 1500 bytes, but some devices support Jumbo frames up to 9000 bytes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_transmission_unit

The advantage of using Jumbo frames, when it is supported, is that it will sometimes speed up large file transfers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo_frame
 
Curious,
If you open network utility do you notice any errors?
I'm noticing this on my iMac...

we either have a) massive failures of NIC cards...
or b) massive bugs in the network drivers
 
gerrynjr said:
Curious,
If you open network utility do you notice any errors?
I'm noticing this on my iMac...

we either have a) massive failures of NIC cards...
or b) massive bugs in the network drivers
Click to expand...

On my particular Mini I am getting zero packet errors with millions of packets sent and received since last reboot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back