How fast is your Airport?

Jump to First Reply
carniphagecarniphage
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Reading reports of unimproved throughput following the release of the N-Abler, I am starting to suspect that Apple's Wifi hardware is way slower than it ought to be for a lot of people.



So the question is "How much throughput can you get from an Airport card?"

I think this would be a really interesting experiment and might produce some surprising results.



Reported connection speed is no use here. Nor is internet download speeds. The only way to measure this is by transferring a large file (>100megabytes) across a wireless network, and timing it. Speeds in megabytes per second (MBs) not (Mbs) please.



It would be useful to see which hardware acheived what. Does Apple's base station work better? Will the n-upgraded cards work with draft-n base stations?



Here's mine....

Mac Pro with 802.11n <-> Belkin pre-n base station. Max speed 1.7MB per second.





C.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    macsuperioritymacsuperiority Posts: 285member
    Draft N and pre N are compeltely different things. I suspect that you are just on 802.11g. It also makes a huge difference how close to the base station both computers are, for g anyways.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 3
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Yeah thanks for that. Yes obviously they will only be working at 802.11g rates. But they are not. They are half that speed. Even when only feet apart.

    In fact from a cold boot - my Mac Pro manages a magnificent 400KBs. Not enven 802.11b speeds.



    So once again.... does any Mac Airport config manage anything close to the theroretical rates?



    I think it would be valuable to test this.



    C.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 3
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Ok. I went away and did some better tests. This time measuring the transfer speed between a machine wired the base station - to a bunch of other machines in the house via WiFi.



    Mac Mini (g) <-> Base Station 2.5MBs

    PC(g) <-> Base Station 2.7MBs

    PC(b) <-> Base Station 550KBs

    Mac Pro(n) <-> Base Station 3.7MBs optimal (wow!)

    Mac Pro(n) <-> Base Station (from cold boot) 400KBs.. Unstable - And slows down other connections in house.!





    So I guess I am wrong. :-( (and partially right)



    I had always been disapointed that I was not acheiving anything like 802.11g speeds.

    My previous point to point speeds are slower than I expected because I guess two links are involved. (machine A to base station) + then (base station to machine B).

    Conclusion: it really does make sense to have shared NAS storage attached to the router. (As in the new Apple Airport Extreme.)



    The multi-antenna Mac Pro Airport is actually much faster than I thought. But it has some sort of problem where it will not spontaneously form a stable connection with the Belkin router. I have to do stuff to make the connection stable.



    I am not alone in this problem - looking at the Apple discussion boards, lots of Mac Pro owners are having issues. Some are restricting networks to 802.11b in order to get a stable connection.



    C.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.