Internet connection slow only on Mac Pro

Thanks for doing that.
So according to your figures....
The fastest your MacPro ever gets is 24 megs in 55 seconds.
Which is about 430Kbytes per second. About 3.5 megabits

Wheras your fastest wireless speed, (6 seconds) is 4600kbytes per second or 36megabits! Ten times faster in optimal conditions. But usually 2-3 times faster in typical conditions.

That's very similar to what I am seeing. With my MacPro - the fastest it ever gets is 460Kbytes per second. I usually see 2-3.6 megabits.

Extrapolating from this incredibly small sample....it looks like some (or possibly all) Mac Pros fitted with the Apple Airport module are running at speeds very typical for the older 802.11b standard. They seem incapable of 801.11g (Airport Extreme) speeds.

This is my System Profiler info.

Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x87)
Wireless Card Locale: Worldwide
Wireless Card Firmware Version: 4.80.46.0

Glyn

Glyn,
I concur with your conclusions and sadly it seems the MacPro is incapable of a fast wireless transfer rate.

My System Profiler info is the same as yours.

As they say, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that the Airport card inside my Mac Pro is labelled BCM93421MC. With a bit of Googling this is revealed to be a Broadcom Draft-802.11N device.

This means that this card is ready for very high speed wireless (up to 300MBits) - Apple is rumoured to be adopting this standard early in order to deliver the iTV box.

The bad news was revealed by installing the "Air Traffic Control" widget - which dynamically shows the state of the current connection. What it shows is fairly shocking, with the connection speed varying wildly, dropping and generally being useless.

I am hoping the conclusion is that the driver for the card is still a work-in-progress and that a future update will resolve the issue.

I noticed that yesterday's revised Boot Camp update did not include a better driver for the Airport card under XP.

i have had a sorry experience with my new Mac pro and similar Airport problem:

After experiencing the same bad wifi speed problems AND a noisy fan ( helicopterish clicking as reported in other threads here ) i decided to drive the mac to the local Apple service centre for repair under warranty.

A few days later get a call saying the hard disk is faulty ( wasnt before ) and then a bit late a call saying the motherboard needs replacing ( this happened after they had tried to install the replacement express card ) . On the replacement motherboard arriving from apple the service guys found out the new board was DOA. So another wait for 5 days. ( The fan was out of stock and wasnt due for another 3 weeks )

Today the new motherboard arrived , the epress card fitted and the service guys phoned to say i could pick it up if i wanted ( the replacement fan would come later )..

On arriving to pick it up i decided to take the precaution of getting the service people to run a hardware test and also test the Airport express was now working. After the technician diligently setting up a wi fi test while i was waiting, it transpired that there was STILL a problem with the replacement Airport card! ( same old slow speed issue ), and thus the machine needed to stay with them.

I went home decided enough was enough and demanded from Apple Store that they collect the mac pro and refund the price.

The whole thing has been a real waste of time and money ( i dont have a car so ended up forking out loads of money in taxi charges going to and fro)

Although i desperately need the speed of a new mac i am going to wait a while before reordering, and see if Apple finally do something about the Airport issue.

While i was collecting the Mac Pro from the service centre in order to box it ready to be returned, one of the service staff mentioned that another customer of theirs had recently returned HER Mac Pro with exactly the same problem.

I am tempted to wait a while and maybe go for the rumoured 8 core Mac pro when it is released.

Mac Pro 2.66 4 Gig Ram, Airport, comfy chair.. Mac OS X (10.3.8) Now returned to Apple due to faulty Airport Xpress

Quote
"Airport Cards being fitted to Mac Pros are marked BCM94321MC - These are Broadcom Intensi-Fi modules which are Draft 802.11N devices. "
That is VERY interesting! Thanks for that info.
But right now there are driver 'issues' with it and I too have poor throughput and large packet loss under either G or B with it... my throughput is less than 1/2 of that that I get from my 17" G4 1.33 Ghz Powerbook even if the power book is placed behind the Mac Pro ref line of sight from the Airport (I use the Apple M8799LL/A AirPort Extreme Base Station with Modem and Antenna Port and it is about 40 feet away in the same room... for now I have to use the Ethernet cable between the AirPort Extreme Base Station and the Mac Pro to get acceptable performance...
I sure hope they fix this soon... BTW I think the update to 10.4.8 may have made it worse in my case... but that could just be my imagination I guess...

Why do we never get an official response from Apple on this? when I call in for support I get the old you are the first person to ever report this problem nonsense which just makes me angry!

Other than this problem my Mac Pro is near perfect as a computer could be and I am delighted with it...

But the way they are dealing with this is leaving a bad taste!

Cheers
Randolph

MacPro 3ghz X1900 4 gig ram 500 gig HD Mac OS X (10.4.8) Powerbook G4 1.333 Ghz 19" iMac G4 800ghz 15"

Does anyone know of any place on the Apple site where one can send feedback directly back to an Apple guy ? most other companies of repute support this.

I also tried talking to an Apple support guy to ask him if the problem is known about and when a fixed version of Mac Pro will ship ( i returned my Mac Pro in disgust at all the problems i was having ) since i really need a new ( and working ) Mac Pro

You mean something like....

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Or perhaps.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macpro.html

Mac Pro + Powerbook G4 + Intel Mac Mini + iMac G3 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Just to add my voice to the chorus... I've been having the same Airport problems everybody else has.

I brought my Mac Pro into the Apple store and they replaced the airport card, which didn't do anything. After a month of trying to get a new logic board from Apple, they just gave me a brand new Mac Pro--but it has EXACTLY the same Airport problem. (This is actually my THIRD Mac pro--the one I brought into the store was my second, following some serious fan issues.)


VERY frustrating. I used this feedback link to express my frustration, and I hope others will, too.

Mac Pro

I've been finding that I have to use Tiger Cache Cleaner which does bring net connections back in line with "normal" and get the same now whether booted to 10..4.8 or Vista.

I had a couple weeks/month where my ISP had updated me to 1.5Mbps but was getting really slow 35k uploads and 800-1100k downloads - and it felt sluggish.

At times it was next to impossible to load these discussions (not sure why Apple?). I recall 10.4.0 totally rewrote the networking layers and real problem back then... seems it isn't really fixed, but reports ('Fixit, MacIntouch) is that Intel macs have more trouble. But also slow on G4 MDD so I think it is also Tiger issue.

And I am (luckily) not using Airport, just wired -