Bpasdar

Q: Macbook Air Extremely Slow Wireless

Hello All,

Got my brand new MB-Air and from the get-go noticed extremely slow wireless performance. I did a bit of digging and here is what I found.

The MB-Air works OK with cheap (consumer) wireless APs, however when used in conjunction with the commercial APs most of which use the Atheros chipset the performance is horrible. I found that when connecting to APs that use Atheros' commercial chipset, the MB-Air connects with 802.11 G specs instead of N even when the signal metrics are excellent such as -39 RSSI.

Moreover, even With the 802.11 G connection at 54Mbps the performance is both sluggish and latent. Small file transfers have a 50/50 shot at working and large file transfers seem to die reliably. Albeit this could be an issue with Apple's implementation of SMB / Samba which is rather poor.

I have tried to turn off Bluetooth to see if my experience is different. We'll see.

I would be interested in feedback from people who are also experiencing the same poor wireless performance to learn the chipset of the AP they are having issues with.

By-the-way -- I will take a fix, if someone has come up with one. However my guess is that this is an engineering issue that Apple has to fix.

BP

Macbook Air Late 2010, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Nov 6, 2010 4:14 AM

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Q: Macbook Air Extremely Slow Wireless

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  • by briller23,

    briller23 briller23 Sep 20, 2011 11:06 AM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2011 11:06 AM in response to Bpasdar

    Hey-

    I tried every config possible with my Airport extreme and Macbbok Air.

    I even bought an E2500 - no luck.

     

    Then I found this link- and getting desparate tried it and it worked.

     

    http://thoughts.maayank.com/2011/08/wireless-problems-with-macbook-air-and.html

     

    Was getting 200kbps download and 1Mbps. Once in a rare moment I would get 5 Mpbs,

     

    Now everytome I get 5 Mbps (max for our cable company in the boonies) and 1 Mbps up.

     

    Apple needs a Lion update for this isue.

     

    Briller

  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski Sep 21, 2011 12:37 AM in response to briller23
    Level 6 (15,152 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 21, 2011 12:37 AM in response to briller23

    Note that by following those instructions you:

     

    1) Are lucky if your networking works at all

    2) Are lucky if you don't brick your machine by possibly installing back-revision firmware

    3) Reopen any number of fixed bugs and security holes

     

    Just a word to the wise; it's like pulling a part from a previous model car and bolting it into a new one because they performed similar functions and hoping nothing bad happens; you might be lucky, but the odds are against it.

  • by briller23,

    briller23 briller23 Sep 21, 2011 9:11 AM in response to William Kucharski
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 21, 2011 9:11 AM in response to William Kucharski

    I appreciate your concern noted.

    It was a risk worth taking in light of the MBA being nearly unusable wirelessly.

    What is your suggestion?

    Thanks.

    Briller

  • by KGAN,

    KGAN KGAN Sep 21, 2011 12:48 PM in response to briller23
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 21, 2011 12:48 PM in response to briller23
  • by Jonesyme,

    Jonesyme Jonesyme Oct 6, 2011 1:02 PM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 6, 2011 1:02 PM in response to Bpasdar

    Briller23 has the answer, gentlemen.  I'm in IT and I tried everything under the sun to fix this issue without using his hack above.  Believe me, it's the only way.  Until Apple gets their act together and patches this bug in their drivers (not likely to happen soon) I recommend following the instructions in his link.  It takes two minutes and it works fine on Snow Leopard.

     

    http://thoughts.maayank.com/2011/08/wireless-problems-with-macbook-air-and.html

  • by ingar,

    ingar ingar Oct 14, 2011 10:25 AM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 14, 2011 10:25 AM in response to Bpasdar

    Turning off Bluetooth made the differance, big time.

     

    Don't see the logic, but it works!?

     

    Bug fix is needed!!

  • by Max H,

    Max H Max H Oct 19, 2011 1:18 PM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 2 (205 points)
    Oct 19, 2011 1:18 PM in response to Bpasdar

    Having very inconsistent WiFi speed here as well. Just purchased my new MBA 13in 1.7GHz i7. Sometimes it screams, sometimes it has trouble loading a page at all. Very troubling for a computer this expensive. I'm running 10.7.2. Bluetooth makes no difference.

     

    Yesterday, I was on the phone with Apple's WiFi department, which couldn't help. Had my late 2008 MBP (2.8GHz Core 2 Duo) right next to my new MBA, and was getting triple the speed in some tests. Seems like a software problem to me.

     

    Dearest Apple: Release a software fix for this!

  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski Oct 23, 2011 3:05 PM in response to ingar
    Level 6 (15,152 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 23, 2011 3:05 PM in response to ingar

    ingar wrote:

     

    Turning off Bluetooth made the differance, big time.

     

    Don't see the logic, but it works!?

     

    Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both use the 2.4 GHz frequency range, so their frequencies very often interfere with one another.

     

    If at all possible and your devices support it, you should use the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi if you also use a Bluetooth device.

  • by ATHiker95,

    ATHiker95 ATHiker95 Oct 24, 2011 9:07 AM in response to manthis
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 24, 2011 9:07 AM in response to manthis

    I spoke with Apple Tech and their first step was for me to reset NVRAM/PRAM.  I did so while I was on the phone with them and that seemed to improve my wifi speed from the 6-10Mbps range back up to 16-18Mbps like it was before I made the upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion on my iMac i7 (mid 2010). Using a linksys wireless g router. 

     

    Unfortunately, after getting off the phone with Apple, it wasn't too long before my system returned to it's old ways.  I may try the reset again, but it doesn't appear to be a permanent fix.

     

    Mark

  • by ATHiker95,

    ATHiker95 ATHiker95 Oct 26, 2011 7:48 PM in response to ATHiker95
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 26, 2011 7:48 PM in response to ATHiker95

    Issue was been resolved (in my case). Entire Internet went down.  Called Time Warner - he told me to unplug modem and router and he was going to refresh my signal (whatever that does).  Waited about 30 seconds (I lost the call, since I have digital phone with Time Warner - of course he didn't call me back), and replugged the modem and router.  Bingo - speeds went back up again and things seem to be normal now (getting 14-18Mbps downloads through www.speedtest.net).  Must have cleared something up in the router somewhere is my guess.  Wish I could be more helpful.  If you haven't unplugged both (and I'm sure nearly everyone has, might be worth a shot).

     

    Mark

  • by jessjlj2008,

    jessjlj2008 jessjlj2008 Nov 3, 2011 7:30 PM in response to William Kucharski
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 3, 2011 7:30 PM in response to William Kucharski

    William Kucharski; where can i locate the "start AirPort Utility??

  • by William Kucharski,

    William Kucharski William Kucharski Nov 4, 2011 3:59 AM in response to jessjlj2008
    Level 6 (15,152 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 4, 2011 3:59 AM in response to jessjlj2008

    AirPort Utility can be found in the Applications -> Utilities folder.

  • by Khaldoon Q8,

    Khaldoon Q8 Khaldoon Q8 Nov 4, 2011 12:22 PM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 4, 2011 12:22 PM in response to Bpasdar

    Still nothing is working with me !!!!

    When I click on a URL I always get the "Sending Request..." message rather than "waiting for www.yahoo.com..." in the status bar !!!

  • by Nikki<3K,

    Nikki<3K Nikki<3K Nov 8, 2011 9:23 AM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 8, 2011 9:23 AM in response to Bpasdar

    I had the Exact same problem!!! I struggled with it for a week and tried everything. All i did today was turn off my bluetooth and now it is as fast as can be Hope it will work for you!!

  • by EricHarrington,

    EricHarrington EricHarrington Nov 23, 2011 3:38 PM in response to Nikki<3K
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 23, 2011 3:38 PM in response to Nikki<3K

    ditto on turning off the bluetooth.  i just got my new mba on nov 21, 2011 to replace my 08 macbook.  when i first got it up and on the wifi here at home, it was fine.  today, i conected my magic mouse and noticed my internet speed went below .5mb down and i usually get 5mb down (att dsl).

     

    i read over every comment in here and decided to try easy stuff first.  i turned off/on the wifi and that made thigns faster for about 30 seconds.  then the speed came to a crawl again.  next i turned off the bluetooth.  so far, (and its been a good 30 minutes) my speed is back to where i'd expect it to be.

     

    so in short, in my case anyway, turning off the bluetooth on my mba seems to have fixed my issue.

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