[cdavis]

I have a small wireless network at home connected to a cable modem:

PowerMac G5 / 10.5.7 / Safari 3.2.3
iMac G4 / 10.5.6 / Firefox 3.0.10
Toshiba laptop / Windows Vista Home / Firefox 3.0.10
Linksys WRT160Nv2 Wireless N Broadband Router

When I visit the SpeakEasy.net Speed Test with each of these systems, I'm getting some weird results - both Macs get 3000-4000/kbps while the Windows machine gets 10000/kbps or more. Are there some settings in Leopard or my router that would drastically reduce download speeds for Macs?

[steve626]

You posted this same query over in the Macfixit forums. Here's what I responded with there:

believe that your two Macs (a PowerMac G5 and an iMac G4) are too old to benefit from the n-draft speeds. So they are getting lower wireless speeds. What kind of airport cards do they have? Also, you can check with the Network Utility what kind of connection they are getting. For instance, I have two computers with n-draft compatible cards and with the n-draft router set up properly, they report 130 Mbps connections, but with a 802.11g router they report 54 Mbps.

If the two Macs are sharing the g signal each might be able to achieve something less than 10 Mbps (the full 54 Mbps speed is almost never achieved and you have multiple computers sharing the signal). If the PC gets a better n-draft connection, it will see a higher speed. The results you are reporting don't surprise me. The reason the full 54 Mbps or 130 Mbps is never achieved is that those speeds drop off quickly with distance from the router, and also due to blockages, multipath and signals from other networks. For instance, a 54 Mbps connection will probably support on the order of 20 or 25 Mbps in real practice, or even less if there is some distance to the router, or walls etc.

[milhous]

it could be either or both of these 2 things:

1. like steve626 said, there could be signal degredation/interference. make sure you're running the latest airport software through software update.

2. those speedtests use adobe flash. here's the truth about flash. adobe flash will ALWAYS run faster on a windows machine than on any other platform--os x, linux, etc. this is because adobe sucks, and doesn't think it's a priority to accelerate and optimize flash on other platforms. this is why everytime you load a flash intensive site the fan on any mac will kick on because it performs awfully eats up the CPU.

To put yourself at ease, I'd just get a long Ethernet cable, plug the Mac directly into one of the switch-ports on the router and run the test again. If you get significantly better results, then it has something to do with the wireless network.

[ghporter]

Try other speed test sites. I can see a noticeable difference between my speeds on Speedtest.net and some of the sites linked by Broadbandreports.com, especially the Java based tests. The variation I see between Flash-based scores must be due to how the Flash tests are implemented. Java is quite efficient on Macs, so I'd trust Java-based test scores to be more "precise." And any speed test score is going to be influenced by lots of things including sunspots and how much traffic is on your ISP's particular branch of the Internet, so any individual test is almost meaningless. You need to track your speed over time, and at various times of day to get a real picture of your link's speed.

With all that said, Speedtest.net's tests seem to be pretty consistent and close to the other tools' tests for my particular link.