Broadcom 43xx (AirPort rebranded) slow speeds

[Alex HQuest]

Any advices to make this network faster, or to use this card in a 5GHz network?

 

Here's the test setup:

 

Leopard 10.5.5 (originally installed as Kaly 10.5.1), voodoo 9.5a9

Rebranded AirPort PCI card, chipset Broadcom 43xx (got from BuildSmart about a week ago)

Restored Info.plist on AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext to original per BuildSmart's advice

Apple AirPort Extreme FW 7.3.2

USB2 1TB external HD

Wide open network (no auth/security), automatic settings (where applied)

On GbE port, I get speeds up to 15MB on Activity Monitor while copying to this USB-attached HD

 

5GHz: can't find network automatically, can't connect manually typing network name.

2.4GHz: finds network, but speed is slow as hell. Got -40dB signal, -86dB noise, 13MBit rate. ~300KB on Activity Monitor.

 

[EDIT]: Disabled IPv6 on AEBS, got peaks of 2MB on Activity Monitor. Better, but still working at ~700KB.

[EDIT 2]: Yeah, those 2MB peaks are just at beginning of transmission. After some secs, it falls back to ~500KB.

[EDIT 3]: Moved back to 802.11n/b/g, my iPhone got +64dB signal, 0 noise, 54MBit rate...

 

I have no 2.4GHz cordless phone at my home to interfere that much. Computer and AEBS are about 3ft distance. No metal parts around AEBS. All 3 antennas are firmly attached to WiFi NIC.

 

Regards.

[Alex HQuest]

Really hate to do this, but

 

Bump.

[Guest BuildSmart]

Any advices to make this network faster, or to use this card in a 5GHz network?

 

Here's the test setup:

 

Leopard 10.5.5 (originally installed as Kaly 10.5.1), voodoo 9.5a9

Rebranded AirPort PCI card, chipset Broadcom 43xx (got from BuildSmart about a week ago)

Restored Info.plist on AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext to original per BuildSmart's advice

Apple AirPort Extreme FW 7.3.2

USB2 1TB external HD

Wide open network (no auth/security), automatic settings (where applied)

On GbE port, I get speeds up to 15MB on Activity Monitor while copying to this USB-attached HD

 

5GHz: can't find network automatically, can't connect manually typing network name.

2.4GHz: finds network, but speed is slow as hell. Got -40dB signal, -86dB noise, 13MBit rate. ~300KB on Activity Monitor.

 

[EDIT]: Disabled IPv6 on AEBS, got peaks of 2MB on Activity Monitor. Better, but still working at ~700KB.

[EDIT 2]: Yeah, those 2MB peaks are just at beginning of transmission. After some secs, it falls back to ~500KB.

[EDIT 3]: Moved back to 802.11n/b/g, my iPhone got +64dB signal, 0 noise, 54MBit rate...

 

I have no 2.4GHz cordless phone at my home to interfere that much. Computer and AEBS are about 3ft distance. No metal parts around AEBS. All 3 antennas are firmly attached to WiFi NIC.

 

Regards.

Like all LinkSYS and Bufallo Technology 11N PCI and D-Link 11N PCI/PCIe cards, they do not support 5ghz (802.11a) so the max connection rate you will see in OS X is 130mbps.

 

Currently, the only 11N cards that I m aware of that work with the 5ghz band are the following

• LAPTOP
  
• the apple miniPCIe laptop adapter
  
• the Gigabyte miniPCIe laptop adapter
  
• the Dell 1505 miniPCIe laptop adapter
   
  DESKTOP OEM (1 week lead time)
  
• the BuildSmart desktop PCIe adapter (Broadcom based)
  
• the BuildSmart desktop PCIe adapter (Broadcom based Low Profile)
  
• the BuildSmart desktop PCIe adapter (Atheros based)
  
• the BuildSmart desktop PCIe adapter (Atheros based Low Profile)
  
• the BuildSmart desktop PCIe adapter (Atheros based Stealth - internal laptop antennas)
   
  DESKTOP (other)
  
• the FoxConn PCIe desktop adapter (discontinued in early 2007 - 1 in stock)
  

The OEM adapters are new, not re-branded and guarantee a minimum connections rate of 270mbps on a AEBS configured as 802.11a/n but they are considerably more expensive than the re-branded 802.11b/g/n PCI adapter you purchased.

 

The only other possible option that might help performance would be to purchase some high-gain antennas but I couldn't say how much of a performance gain you would receive cause doing the math, a PCI 133mhz (64bit) bus has an effective rate of 1064mbps and a PCI 66mhz (32bit) bus has an effective rate of 528mbps so I suspect you're already at this rate where a PCIe x1 card would have a rate of 2.5gbps.

[Alex HQuest]

Like all LinkSYS and Bufallo Technology 11N PCI and D-Link 11N PCI/PCIe cards, they do not support 5ghz (802.11a) so the max connection rate you will see in OS X is 130mbps.

 

[snip]

 

The OEM adapters are new, not re-branded and guarantee a minimum connections rate of 270mbps on a AEBS configured as 802.11a/n but they are considerably more expensive than the re-branded 802.11b/g/n PCI adapter you purchased.

 

The only other possible option that might help performance would be to purchase some high-gain antennas but I couldn't say how much of a performance gain you would receive cause doing the math, a PCI 133mhz (64bit) bus has an effective rate of 1064mbps and a PCI 66mhz (32bit) bus has an effective rate of 528mbps so I suspect you're already at this rate where a PCIe x1 card would have a rate of 2.5gbps.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't sure if this card supported 5GHz freqs/802.11a standard or not.

 

Now, even using this card on a standard PCI port, which supposedly reaches up to 528mbps, isn't 13mbit a real lower rate? Are these high-gain antennas really necessary, for a computer 3ft far away from the AEBS?

 

Again, thank you for your time and help.

[Alex HQuest]

Super bump.

 

This time with a fix.

 

Apple released Apple Airport Extreme Update 2008-003 (which suddenly went down some minutes after released) and re-fixed it as Update 2008-004, which now made my card get way better speeds than before. Although still getting lower speeds while copying files to USB disk attached to Airport Extreme base station, I am usually connected @ 39-52MBits, and these speeds are pretty much achievable while copying files to/from another machine on my local network.

 

I'm still getting lower speeds than other USB dongles on Windows machines, but I can live with that.