3 replies to this topic

[Roman2K]

Hello,

I have a problem with the wifi connection of my iMac Intel Core Duo 17" which is one week old.

When I booted for the first time, my WPA-encrypted wifi network was successfully detected and I was asked to enter the key. All went well.

But I noticed and notice a strange thing: the downloading speed varies from a high speed to a very low speed (near 0 KB/s) and vice-versa all the time. Moreover, web pages take more time to load than from another computer on the same network; and while pinging a machine on the same network the latency varies from 0 or 1 ms to ~250 ms.

All other computers on the same network, wired or not have a 1 ms latency with other computers and download constantly at around 4 or 5 MB/s on the LAN, and at around 600 KB/s on the 'net. Compared to this normal behaviour, my iMac downloads at an average speed of 200 KB/s on the LAN or on the 'net, and pings other machines with an average latency of 100 ms

 varying_wifi_speed_small.jpg   431.77K   293 downloads

Look at the screenshot attached to this post. At the bottom of the "Moniteur d'activité" window, you can see a graph showing the varying speed (green line); and in the "Terminal" window you can see low-to-high latency ping to a networked computer.

I suspected a MTU problem but changing it did not change the download speed nor the ping latency.

I would be glad yo hear some of you who had the same problem and found a way to solve it, or it you have any idea...
Would the next Mac OS X update 10.4.5 do something good to the Airport wifi connection ?

Thank you.

[sigxcpu]

I have the same problem with 14e4,4320 (pcmcia version) airport compatible (it's the same actually) on 8f1111a. Maybe the broadcom chip sucks or the Apple drivers suck.

be careful, maybe also can depend on AP brand. worked ok with linksys wrt54g (broadcom based) but not ok with asus wl500g (dunno what card it has, maybe broadcom too)

[Roman2K]

I called Apple support and they are aware of the problem but according to what the tech said me, they have not found the solution yet or haven't finished to repair it. It should be fixed soon in Mac OS X 10.4.5 or separately in a downloadable update file.

[Tobias]

This is not just an issue with Intel-powered macs.
We have the same issue with an powerbook 15".
As soon as it connects to the network and starts trying to use the network (streaming video/copying files) it breaks the network.
Other machines get pingtimes between 1ms-1500ms, same on the powerbook.
This is not something that is a problem when the machine is just used to do moderate surfing, or when the machine is not there.
So expect an update for the airport issues, sound issues & video issues soon hopefully...