Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
AirPort Time Capsule latest version.
Wireless AC.
Those 5Ghz channels, which one usually gives highest speed? I have tested few, I felt channel 36 seemed to have highest speed than channel 52 or 100 or 149, but channel 36 looks very crowded, many neighbour 5Ghz are around this channel while channel 100 / 149 are not used by any neighbours.
Is that true that OS X prefers channel 36 than others?
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10)
It prefers whichever channel is clearest.
what is a clear channel? A crowded channel shouldn't be 'clear' right?
Here is my wi-fi scanning, all 5Ghz SSIDs are around channel 36-52. But if I forced it to channel 149, I actually got lower speed.
A clear channel?
One with less clients using it.
That is not what I saw from my tests. The clearest channels (100 or 149) gave me lowest speed...
There is significantly poorer range on the higher freq at 5ghz.. surprisingly.. the routers are designed to actually boost power output as at the higher channels.. however some routers do not work especially well.. or have poorly tuned antenna.. or use beam forming.. like the apple router.
One characteristics of beam forming is that it takes time to establish.. and it will read wrongly on your test software. So to actually get the test to work properly you need to do actual file transfers and give it a few minutes to crank up.
Are you using AC client? It can make some difference also as 149 is the best space for contiguous 80mhz bandwidth needed for full AC.
LaPastenague wrote:
There is significantly poorer range on the higher freq at 5ghz.. surprisingly.. the routers are designed to actually boost power output as at the higher channels.. however some routers do not work especially well.. or have poorly tuned antenna.. or use beam forming.. like the apple router.
One characteristics of beam forming is that it takes time to establish.. and it will read wrongly on your test software. So to actually get the test to work properly you need to do actual file transfers and give it a few minutes to crank up.
Are you using AC client? It can make some difference also as 149 is the best space for contiguous 80mhz bandwidth needed for full AC.
Thanks for the info, mine is rMBP late 2013 version, I am able to get above 500Mbps on channel 36.
With channel 149, the speedtest results are lower, around 500Mbps.
When you said "give it a few minutes to crank up", is this required only when Router is rebooted? Or every time when I start using computers/devices?
Every time the computer goes to sleep the actual settings will change..
When it wakes up the wireless is likely to be different..
Please do give me the link speeds.. Not the actual throughput.
I have to say everyone here probably thought you were talking about link speed.. but I see you are talking about actual throughput.
I refuse to update to Yosemite.. but the command should still be to hold down option key whilst you click on the wifi symbol.
This gives a bunch of useful info.
Give me this screenshot using 36 and using 149.. give it to me if it changes like on waking the computer.. or when you have started transferring files.
The other place to get the info is wireless diagnostics.. which is listed at the bottom..
You can get a lot of info out of the utility.. it however is different on yosemite.
The major spike on the curve of signal and SNR is when I changed over channels.. do this and mark what the changes are.. or do a separate graph for each one.
As a final note..
538 on 36 vs 500 on 149 I would count as error margins of any test... that is less than 10% difference.. And these tests are not proof one way or the other of wireless .. it can be internet or router or congestion..
If you want accurate indications you must use iperf in your own network.. not to the internet.
Sorry for the late reply.
I monitored for 2 weeks after fixed to channel 149. I think OSX doesn't perform poorly on this channel, download speed from the same speedtest server is between 500Mbps and 560Mbps at various time, which is acceptable.
Hi
I think your problem might be that your SSID has none alphanumeric characters in it, I changed mine and took a dash out and since then praying to the networking god it has performed betteras you can see my rates are quite good
Ted
Does OS X prefer 5Ghz channel 36 than others?
