Macbook Pro Slow Wireless N


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Hi,

Rather than explain it I'll just show you this and hopefully you'll understand my problem:

post-70638-1247927627.png

The speed does sometimes go up to 104 and perhaps a little higher, but generally the connection is very slow. I'm confident the router settings aren't at fault, as my previous computer (a Dell Studio, upgraded to wireless N by me and so only designed for wireless G) achieved connection speeds much, much higher, often hitting 270 and sometimes 300.

My connection strength is 100% (as you can see) and I'm only sat about 4 meters away from the router. The Network Utility always reports I am connected at 130, but from what I can see that doesn't really mean anything. On my Dell, Windows reported similar connection speeds as the router.

I can only conclude that it's my Macbook pro at fault but I don't understand why. Watching videos and transfering things over wireless is OK, but HD video stutters and doesn't do too well.

Does anybody have any tips on how I can improve it? Are there any settings in OSX or anywhere I can change. My router is a D-Link DIR-365 with the latest Firmware. My Macbook Pro is up to date and the most recent late-2009 model.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

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As a rule of thumb, wireless is crap and actual throughput over it is usually nothing compared to what it says. At 103Mb/s you should get in excess of 10MB/s, which would be fine for HD, but very rarely the case.

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Is there anyway I can switch to 5GHz? The only options available to me are in the 2.4 range.

Unfortunately it requires a separate support from the device itself and you can't simply "flash" the device to work on the spectrum.

You might try tuning the Leopard network stack and see it it helps the video streaming, try this;

First open the terminal application or iTerm (or whatever you use), then switch to suitable superuser privileges with sudo -s and copy paste the following to a terminal;

sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0

Optionally you might also try:

sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.recvspace=32768 
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.sendspace=32768 
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.win_scale_factor=1 
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.sockthreshold=0

exit and close the terminal.

Note, these changes do not persist over a reboot so it's good for testing if it has any effect on your wireless performance. In short what they do is disable the TCP window scaling option and change the receive/send sizes a bit. They may also have no effect on your wireless performance so don't expect miracle results.

Also some D-Link Wireless Routers have an option called WMM Enable which may help with multimedia jitter on a wireless connection - you may find this option under Advanced Wireless (It does not exist on my DAP-1353 but I think it does on some DIR- models).

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Isn't changing to 5Ghz done at the router side?

I have a Time Capsule I've been using as my N wireless base station... my Macbook Pro connected at both 2.4 and 5Ghz. (I checked the speeds too, was by far increased when using 5Ghz).

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Isn't changing to 5Ghz done at the router side?

Yes but it requires hardware support from the actual base station.

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As a rule of thumb, wireless is crap and actual throughput over it is usually nothing compared to what it says. At 103Mb/s you should get in excess of 10MB/s, which would be fine for HD, but very rarely the case.

Not a chance, 10MB/sec is bordering fast ethernet wirespeed...

No way you would reach that at 103Mbit/sec wireless

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Unfortunately it requires a separate support from the device itself and you can't simply "flash" the device to work on the spectrum.

You might try tuning the Leopard network stack and see it it helps the video streaming, try this;

First open the terminal application or iTerm (or whatever you use), then switch to suitable superuser privileges with sudo -s and copy paste the following to a terminal;

sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0

Optionally you might also try:

sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.recvspace=32768 
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.sendspace=32768 
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.win_scale_factor=1 
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.sockthreshold=0

exit and close the terminal.

Note, these changes do not persist over a reboot so it's good for testing if it has any effect on your wireless performance. In short what they do is disable the TCP window scaling option and change the receive/send sizes a bit. They may also have no effect on your wireless performance so don't expect miracle results.

Also some D-Link Wireless Routers have an option called WMM Enable which may help with multimedia jitter on a wireless connection - you may find this option under Advanced Wireless (It does not exist on my DAP-1353 but I think it does on some DIR- models).

Thanks I'll give it a try. Video tends to be OK...it's just HD content that's a bit jittery. I've got the WMM enabled so hopefully that's doing its job.

I'm sure my router supports 5GHz, but I think in the UK it's disabled or something. I might try downloading a US version of the firmware and trying that, or maybe just changing my country to Ireland or something. What I don't understand is why my Dell could connect up to 300.

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78 Mbps, if you're really NEXT to the router, ask yourself some questions. Otherwise, if the signal goes through 2 walls and has to go over a 15 meters distance, it's very good.

Wireless networks, even if they exist for us consumers since what... a good 8 years maybe... isn't quite there yet. I also have a time capsule and wish it was faster. My other iMac is plugged in directly into it via ethernet and the speeds aren't comparable.

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Thanks I'll give it a try. Video tends to be OK...it's just HD content that's a bit jittery.

Unfortunately I won't most likely be able to respond to many messages in the future as I'm getting hit by +20% warnings by the Microsoft fanboy mods for trying to bring some sanity to their one sided treatment of people here.

I suggest you check the discussions.apple.com board regarding the 2.4/5Ghz limitations and perhaps they have some suggestions there (there are several pretty pro people around) how to improve the overall network throughput without additional hardware.

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I hate the fact that the Wireless N on my Macbook is rather slow. i have a WRT160N or something like that. And N is enabled and just like the OP 70 something is the highest it ever gets. The main issue I have with this is the fact that i do a lot of streaming and things from a server i have in the house and with those speeds i cannot stream a movie from the server i have to copy it and play it first. however i notice that WoW does not lag as much anymore over wireless lol.

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I hate the fact that the Wireless N on my Macbook is rather slow.

There are ways to tune the wireless performance on the router end as well, for example changing the default RTS and Fragmentation threshold values can improve performance and signal quality as well as lowering the beacon interval slightly.

Unfortunately there is no sure way to tell what values are best as the local area interference (alongside things like walls etc.) can change the optimal values. It's best to just experiment :)

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OK, well thanks all for your help. I've switched on Auto Channel Scan (I set it to 13 out of habbit) and my speed is a little higher. I'm still a bit miffed though!

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On my MBP, I get 130 if I'm on the 2.4GHz band, and 270 if I'm on the 5Ghz band (using an Airport Extreme Base Station).

As for the channels, just fiddle with them, I find it's trial and error, but there's usually one channel that's best, and it's not usually the auto one :p.

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Best thing to do is use netstumbler to find out the channels of the other networks in the area, and remember that data on one channel interferes with one either side of it. So for example, you had networks on 1, 3, 5, 9 - 7 would be the better channel.

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I've used iStumbler and there aren't any other networks around me, but I am using channel 1, which seems a bit...default really.

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If you want to get 300mbps and don't care about B or G devices, then set your router to the 40MHz setting..

setup -> wireless settings -> manual setup -> channel width -> 40mhz (or auto 20/40)..

You might want to mess with WPA2 settings as well.

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