How do I improve wireless network speed on my Time Capsule (or is it my Macbook Pro)?

Your screenshots are really helpful if somewhat confusing.

80/20 is not that fast.. you should be able to manage that or very close to it on 2.4ghz.

Your 5ghz from the lounge has signal at -80 dBm and noise at -84dBm.. that gives only 4dB of signal above noise.. which will give vrey high errors.

Your speed from 4feet is hugely better.. you are getting a sync speed over 1000Mbps.. so did you test your internet speed from there? You should well and truly attain 80/20 at that. If not then the laptop wireless might well be faulty or need driver updates.

There is really only one setting I can see worth playing with.. set wireless on 5Ghz to channel 149 or above.

You could even try your top channel 161.

The reason to do this is extra amplification of the higher freq RF output.. and it can help a lot.

The other thing to do is to check the signal from your computer at the Time Capsule.

Simply place your mouse cursor over the name of the computer which should show as a client. (Mine is showing as MAC address or IP is also possible)

I am getting -41dBm signal at the TC (which is older Gen4 model)..

The data rate is nonsense.. it usually shows correct speed.. but I will do ookla test and you will see it is not actually slow at all.

These are same as my speed on ethernet.. and about max out my internet. (100/40)

Last Result:

Download Speed: 93224 kbps (11653 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 37048 kbps (4631 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 4 ms

8/2/2019, 12:40:37 PM,93224,37048,4

I hope yours shows the correct link speed.

Wireless is always two way.. so fast link in one direction and poor link in the other will give you overall a poor speed.

On the computer I get

A fairly sudden change in speed.. from working properly to having issues.. might also be worth doing a factory reset on the TC.

Reconfigure it with different wireless name.. at least for 5ghz.. short, no spaces and pure alphanumerics.. which is pretty close to what you have. Password also same rules but longer.

No luck then see if you can borrow another wireless router to try or see if a friend can test with Mac laptop.

Just an observation.. your result from the lounge on 2.4ghz is pretty good..

Your result from 4feet to the TC is much worse.. worse signal and much worse noise. It makes me think your location for the TC is poor. Could you move it closer to the lounge? Even if you just get a long ethernet to give it a try.

Noise went from -92dBm.. which is good.. to -77dBm which is fairly poor. That is dramatic increase.

I presume you live in apartments with close neighbours and noise with new equipment from neighbour could be a reason for your poor results.

You can also use wireless diagnostic scan.. and do a survey around your house.. lounge and TC location to check for all the surrounding wifi.

Great troubleshooting! Ok, you confirmed that, at least, there isn't a hardware issue with your notebook.

In addition to using a new account, one other thing that you can try is to basically delete all of the network-related plist for the problematic user account. macOS will rebuild them to their defaults.

Here are the steps to do so:

• Quit any applications that are currently using Wi-Fi.
• Turn off Wi-Fi from the Wi-Fi icon on the macOS menu bar.
• Open Finder > Go > Go To Folder
  • In the "Go to the folder" window, enter:/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
  • Click on Go
• Locate and select the following files:

Note: Files are macOS version specific, not all the following files are used in each version.

• • com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
  • com.apple.network.eapolclient.configuration.plist
  • com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist
  • NetworkInterfaces.plist
  • preferences.plist
• Move any matching files to the macOS Desktop. You can place them all in a folder as a backup. The "missing" files will be rebuilt after restarting the Mac.
• Reboot the Mac.
• Re-enable Wi-Fi from the Wi-Fi icon on the macOS menu bar.
• Try accessing the Internet again.

LaPastenague has done an excellent job providing you with a ton of details to help you with troubleshooting your issue. I just wanted to add a bit in hope that it would assist with this.

Both your Time Capsule and your MacBook Pro are capable of broadcasting/connecting to a wireless network that employs up to three spatial streams. The MCS Index value is one indicator that lets you know how many streams are being used at any given point in time for a particular wireless connection.

If we look at your Wi-Fi menu screen shots, that value ranges from 1 to 23, depending on where your notebook established a connection to the TC. The link I included will provide you with a table so that you can see what each of those MCS Index values mean. For a three spatial stream connection, the best you can achieve is 23 ... the worst, 0. The fact that it did achieve a "23" connection, would indicate to me, that there is nothing wrong with either the TC or the notebook. Instead, I would be looking at Wi-Fi interference as being the main culprit in this situation. This type of interference can be caused by a number of factors, including other Wi-Fi operating nearby, other forms of RF emission sources, and obstacles, like walls, ceilings, floors, etc. ... especially due to the construction materials utilized.

The other thing to understand is that Wi-Fi is a two-way communication. Most folks are led to believe that if they just increase the transmitter power of the router that this alone should solve the problem. The part most forget is that the wireless client (like your notebook) is also a wireless transmitter. Just a much weaker one by design. So think of when you increase the power of the router (it's now shouting), the client can still only "whisper" back to it ... and there is no built-in way to increase the transmitter power of any Apple device.

Just to show that after a few hours the TC finally decided to show the wireless link correctly.

This is the kind of info I would expect. And it can help to understand signal levels at both ends.

Yeah.. great work.

My tendency is to clean install not upgrade over and over as Apple wants us to do. I guess as an ancient PC tech.. I just don't trust upgrades as they inevitably do a poor job. Unfortunately Apple succumbed to the temptation for annual upgrades so instead of steady patching and fixing they give us a brand new version with a whole new set of bugs.

So I would create a bootable clone on USB drive.. and boot from it and ensure everything works as before. (You can download and use Carbon Copy Cloner and use it free for a month to do this). Don't trust a Time Machine backup!! Just don't do it. Too often vital stuff is missing.

Then boot your laptop again to recovery and wipe the drive.. and install clean version of Mojave or whatever you prefer.

You can then recover all your files and settings from either the clone or the Time Machine backup using Migration Assistant.

Tesserax has given you the how to repair the actual install method.

But I also note you already did an upgrade as a repair as part of your attempt to get things working again.

• Updating to latest version of macOS

I would definitely go the clean install route.