MacNewsBlog

For some reason I'd have a heck of a time grabbing files from my server which is over in the next room even though my airport signal is at full strength with 4 bars showing. The server is hard wired with an ethernet cable. At first I thought it was an AppleTalk over wireless problem but nixed that once I tried to transfer files to and from my older Powerbook G4 wirelessly and seeing it work perfectly. I tried a dozen other things to remedy this problem but the only thing that worked was a hard line ethernet connection. When I used that, everthing worked without any problem! I began to think that my Airport Card was defective as many have discussed in the Apple Discussion groups.

Last night I was working on a project at home and experienced the same wacky connection debacle. I went to www.speakeasy.net/speedtest to see what my up and download speeds were like. Turns out my upload speed was normal but my download speed was just awful. I repeated the test several times with the same results. Thinking that maybe my network was having some sort of problem, I went to the server room and did the same test directly on the server. The results were fine as upload and download speeds looked really good compared to my dismal download speed on my MacBook Pro. So what the heck was going on. In order to do a reality check, I grabbed an ethernet cable and hooked it up to the MacBook Pro and suddenly my download speed was back to normal!

Puzzled by this I decided to see if the location of my MacBook Pro was the problem. Since the MacBook was still attached to my Dell monitor I had to hold the MacBook and run the speakeasy web test. I didn't notice much of a difference even though I moved the MacBook from side to side to see if the wireless reception was any better. Finally I disconnected the MacBook from the Dell and tried to run the test without the monitor... thinking that perhaps the Dell was causing "wireless interference" of some sort. Guess what? My wireless speeds went back to normal once it was disconnected! I once again had great download and upload speeds!

Now before you go thinking that Dell monitors are causing your airport problems you must read this last part: I plugged my Dell back into my MacBook Pro and left the MacBook Pro open so that both screens were on, and lo and behold my wireless speeds were back to normal. So it turns out that closing the lid of the MacBook causes the wireless connection to drop dramatically. This actually makes sense since Apple built the antenna into the MacBook Pro's hinge at the bottom of the display. Even though the airport card was able to pull full signal strength it could not manage downloading files when it's lid was closed.

So the lesson learned: If you run your MacBook wirelessly with the lid closed, your network connection may or may not be as fast as you'd like regardless of how strong the signal strength is showing for your wireless connection. For my setup, it's either leave the MacBook Open in dual screen mode or run a ethernet connection over to my desk in the other room. As always your milage may vary but I hope this gets people to try different things to figure out whats going on with their wireless connection / airport problems.