Macbook Core2Duo with N Capbilities not showing N Link Speed

Question

I have a MacBook C2D and a MacBookPro 17" Unibody. The Network Utility on the MBP 17 indicates that my wireless adapter is N capable and is operating at a 144 Mbps link speed. Unfortunately, the MacBook also shows that the wireless adapter is N capable but the link speed is only at 54 Mbps.
Any ideas on why one laptop gets the N speed and the other doesn't? They are sitting right next to each other and right next to the router (Linksys WRT310N).
Message was edited by: radesix2

Answer 1

After doing some research on obtaining N speeds I realized a couple of important things.
1) I wasn't using WPA2 security
2) I had other G network devices on the network that negatively impact the performance of N networks
There is a networking website that is a treasure trove of information that was useful in my research called smallnetbuilder.com.
I decided to try separating my G devices onto a seperate wireless network from the N devices despite the fact that the MBP 17 Unibody did seem to be registering 144Mbit/s N speeds with coexisting N and G devices in Network Utility. The only problem seemed to be the Macbook which was only registering 54Mbit/s. After seperating the two networks the Macbook is now clearly registering 130Mbit/s N speeds.
My solution was to configure the N router to N mode only on channel 1 and turne on WPA2 Personal security. For the G network, I changed the channel to 11 and turned on WPA (XBOX 360 doesn't support WPA2).
Now I am experiencing much better performance on the Macbook and Network Utility is showing more of what I expect.
Hope this helps someone else.