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 Poison_the_well,

    Poison_the_well Poison_the_well Jun 8, 2013 1:41 AM in response to arthurs433
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 8, 2013 1:41 AM in response to arthurs433

    that might mess up my Ps3 connection tho!!  

  • by Poison_the_well,

    Poison_the_well Poison_the_well Jun 8, 2013 1:42 AM in response to Poison_the_well
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 8, 2013 1:42 AM in response to Poison_the_well

    right now it seems to work okay with the fixes i posted

  • by arthurs433,

    arthurs433 arthurs433 Jun 8, 2013 1:45 AM in response to Poison_the_well
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 8, 2013 1:45 AM in response to Poison_the_well

    ok. Try these dns if using Ps3 too.

    208.67.222.222

    208.67.220.220

  • by fbrianreilly,

    fbrianreilly fbrianreilly Jun 19, 2013 7:43 AM in response to arthurs433
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 19, 2013 7:43 AM in response to arthurs433

    Having the same issues here. My mba from april 2013 is reporting download speeds of .35 mbs, whereas my iphone which is right next to it is reporting 14.5 mbs. What gives. Dissapointing and the first flaw in an otherwise great machine.

  • by badteacher,

    badteacher badteacher Jun 23, 2013 4:25 AM in response to ESanchez
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    Jun 23, 2013 4:25 AM in response to ESanchez

    Thank you!! I have tried every other suggestion on here to no avail. Channel 6 fixed everything! And I'm pretty new to mac so its been a learning curve.

  • by pior,

    pior pior Jul 24, 2013 3:54 AM in response to badteacher
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    Jul 24, 2013 3:54 AM in response to badteacher

    Thanks man, this resolved my wifi problems!

     

    I had download speeds of 1/5 of my old windows laptop.

    At first I changed channel in router settings from 11 to 6 and it improved.

    But best solution was to set it either to 10 or 13, DL speeds went to normal.

     

    So it seems for some routers you have to try different wifi channels...

  • by belcan65,

    belcan65 belcan65 Sep 14, 2013 8:57 AM in response to Thedyingdandy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 14, 2013 8:57 AM in response to Thedyingdandy

    I bought my MBA in September 2013, had same problem with Internet speed. I tried most of the suggestions from this forum(except for the driver install).The  only thing that fixed the issue was changing router to fixed channel. Thanx guys.

  • by macwhatever,

    macwhatever macwhatever Sep 15, 2013 7:11 PM in response to pior
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 15, 2013 7:11 PM in response to pior

    WOW! THANK YOU!! I took my MBA to the Apple Store in NYC because of these slow wifi problems. My Win7 laptop and older MBP both showed up to 20Mb/s on speedtests, but my MBA (2012) started showing just 0.2Mb/s. Terrible. The Store Genius guys told me I needed to buy a new Airport Express, I did, but it made no difference. I reinstalled Mountain Lion... no luck. I was pulling my hair out, and then I saw this forum thread, changed my Airport Express's channel to 10, and lo and behold, I'm up to 19Mb/s!

     

    I should go and tell those guys at the Store...

     

    THANKS AGAIN! :^)

  • by jgm7413,

    jgm7413 jgm7413 Oct 6, 2013 12:18 AM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 6, 2013 12:18 AM in response to Bpasdar

    Hello Everyone. I just wanted to tell you guys about the issue that I am facing. My bluetooth keyboard and trackpad work just fine without interfering with the frequency of my wifi. The issue I am having is with my Bluetooth Logitech UE Boombox. I looked up the frequency that it runs between and apparently it runs directly in between what my router offers (2400–2480 MHz) and I believe this causes the interference with the signal. This is frustrating indeed. Probably I will purchase an AC router since my macbook air is AC compatible. I wish they made bluetooth connect on a different frequency.

  • by kromka,

    kromka kromka Nov 2, 2013 4:33 AM in response to writerIP
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 2, 2013 4:33 AM in response to writerIP

    thanks for sharing this. It really works!!!

  • by briller23,

    briller23 briller23 Dec 4, 2013 6:54 PM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 4, 2013 6:54 PM in response to Bpasdar

    Well, I have tried many of these possible solutions since April 2011. Some worked for a while, some never worked and most were intermittent. I am lucky ot get .2-.3 Kbps at public hotspots. Tethering to my iphone has been the only solution.  I have never had such frustrating networking/connection expereince. AppleInsider notes Apple is apparently working on a fix. Snore.

     

    Here's what has worked flawlessly:

     

    Engenius EUB9706  300Mbps USB Adpater. $18 on Amazon.

     

    Just like the old days. Through put right now is 10Mb at a hot spot.

     

    Waiting for the Aplle Macbook Wifi fix.....

     

    Briller.

     

    13" Macbook Air OS 10.7.5

  • by HenryHof,

    HenryHof HenryHof Jan 27, 2014 10:29 PM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2014 10:29 PM in response to Bpasdar

    Hey All,

     

    yesterday I installed the update of Mavericks. I small update of over 5 GB!

    Today I made a new test with my wireless at home. Now I am close to my
    other network devices. This update solves a problem which is for me
    very important. (I could not download bigger files) and for Apple a disaster.

    I was already thinking about to give Apple my notebook back.

    I like my Apple Air and for me it is a nice device, but only beeing nice is not enough.

     

    I hope you have the same experience and I hope the next update doesn't kill this
    step into the right direction.

     

    Greets

    Henry

  • by Sigep739,

    Sigep739 Sigep739 Feb 25, 2014 9:06 AM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2014 9:06 AM in response to Bpasdar

    I have a 2012 MBP.  The wireless has always been flawless at home or at friends... but anytime I went somewhere publicly where I had to authenticate some terms of service (i.e. a Starbucks or other similar wifi hot spot), the network speed dropped to unusable.  It was terrible.

     

    Today - I fixed it mostly... clearing PRAM ironically worked for me.  Despite the fact that it "shouldnt" work... it did.  Now I have decent speeds and can operate in public!

  • by cyranodesale,

    cyranodesale cyranodesale Mar 17, 2014 1:21 PM in response to Sigep739
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 17, 2014 1:21 PM in response to Sigep739

    As I reported in another thread, I am currently using another OS with dual-boot in Macbook Air.

     

    I managed to install Elementary OS, a linux distribution based on Ubuntu, as its generic driver (nothing to do with BROADCOM) actually works with my mid-2011 macbook air. I tried the proprietary BROADCOM driver located by Elementary OS, and it screwed up my wifi connection just as much as in OS X. Then, I am currently using a generic linux driver to connect to wifi networks with my Macbook Air...

     

    Seems that, at least in my case and perhaps in others, the driver is somehow related to the slow wifi problem.

  • by gm_ests,

    gm_ests gm_ests May 24, 2014 7:44 PM in response to Bpasdar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 24, 2014 7:44 PM in response to Bpasdar

    Hi all,

     

    I finally fixed this problem on a customers macbook air by opening it up and checking the airport card.

     

    It turns out one of the antenna cables had come loose/detached properly from the card. Once I re-attached it and turned on the MBA, all was well!

     

    I had previously tried many things such as disabling bluetooth, manually rolling back the 80211family kext, etc, all to no avail.

     

    Hope this helps anyone else who is about to give up!

     

    Cheers

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