What is Link Speed?

I am using a Macbook Pro and in my Utilities->Network Utility you can check the network connection you are using. Well, I can use ethernet(hardwired connection) or a wireless connection(through my airport extreme 802.11n router). When I look in the network utility it says "Link Speed:". When I am connected with the ethernet it says Link Speed: 100 Mb, when connected with my wireless connection is says Link Speed: 300 Mb. So I am wondering what the difference is, is my wireless connection going to be faster than my ethernet? I use DSL. Which will be best to use? Thanks.

So I am wondering what the difference is, is my wireless connection going to be faster than my ethernet?
Yes
I use DSL. Which will be best to use?
It doesn't matter. Your DSL connection is probably 5 Mbps or less so both types of connections are many, many times faster.

Similar Messages

How do I see what (cabled) link speed I have between base stations?

Hi
I do own one new Airport Extreme base station and one older Airport Extreme (flat one).
Both are capable of 1 Gbit-speed via ethernet cable. I have the new base station as "master" and the old as extender (via cable). How can I ensure that the speed between them are using Gbit and not 100 Mbit?
"use cable xxxx" is not an answer I will settle with, I want to se the numbers somehow, via Airport Utility or 3rd party.
Is this possible?
Very thankful for any help I might get.
/Erik

There is no info in the airport utility and there is no third party to get you in either..
There is no easy way.. but a gigabit switch plugged in between the two devices would instantly show you the connection speed if it has LED indicators that show gigabit.
Gigabit switches are not that much money to payout now. Particulary if you have some place you might use one.
Otherwise simply do a throughput test.. plug a computer into the main unit by ethernet and plug another computer into the other end.. if you get a file copy speed say 15MB/s you have gigabit. You cannot pass files at greater than about 12MB/s on 100mbit.

What's the speed of mackbook pro HD link? is it ATA100? is Fireface 400

What's the speed of mackbook pro Hard drive link? is it ATA100? is Fireface 400/800 faster than the link of the macbook pro hard drive?
I'm a recording artist. I'll use my macbook pro to record sounds, because my macbook pro 's disk is too small, I deceide to buy a fireface 800 hard drive like Lacie. Is it ok to record sounds in logic directly into the fireface 800 hard drive? or it's still better to record sounds into macbook pro's Hd.
which one is faster anyway?
Thanks!

It makes little difference whether the drive is SATA 1.5 or 3.0 because the MBP controller only supports SATA 1.5. SATA 3.0 drives will work but simply not at the faster speed.
The FW800 interface is capable of up to 100 MB/s interface transfer rates. The hard drives however are not able to achieve that speed in typical real world throughput. The most expensive high speed SATA drives (3.5", 7200 or faster RPM) may come close to saturating the FW800 bus. But smaller notebook drives (2.5") will not. So if you plan to use a notebook sized external drive just get one that will suit your storage needs. If maximizing throughput is important then get a 7200 RPM SATA notebook drive and put it in a FW800 enclosure. Be sure to get an enclosure that uses the Oxford chipset.
You can find suitable enclosures at:
MacSales.com
CoolDrives.com
WiebeTech.com
CalDrives.com
FirewireDirect.com
Good sources for drives are MacSales.com, Buy.com, and NewEgg.com.

Upgraded Mini: Link speed = 130Mbps, Transmit rate = 65Mbps

It was a long night last night. I finally upgraded my old Mini (Late 2006) with a compatible Atheros AR9280 wifi card. It's already been upgraded years ago to 2GHz C2D, SSD, 2GB RAM - running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. So wireless-N is really the last thing to do here.
Installed easy enough. Recognized and connected to my AEBS (2nd gen.) - but only at 65Mbps transmit rate. No matter what - apparently. Network Utility reports Link Speed at 130Mbps possible.
My network:
AEBS (2nd gen): 2.4GHz N-only, WPA2, Can't go to 5GHz - my tablets/phones not compatible, and AEBS (2nd gen) is not dual-band.
LAN-connected: Mac Mini Server (2010), Windows 8 laptop, and my NAS.
WLAN: Windows 7 laptop, above Windows 8 laptop occasionally, 2 pads, 2 phones, and the old Mini in question.
All of the above achieve transmit rates at 117-130Mbps depending on where I'm positioned (except the weaker phones and pads).
Here's what I tried and discovered last night:
[thinking it's interference/distance/signal problem]
1. Positioned the mini 6 inches from AEBS - increased signal to -22, but still 65Mbps.
[thinking it's single vs multiple data stream problem, so then...]
2. Connected the bluetooth antenna as secondary antenna on the card - increased signal, but still 65Mbps.
[thinking it's antenna problems, so then...]
3. Used 2 antennas from parted laptop. No change.
[thinking it's a problem with the wifi card, so then...]
4. Installed the card in an old Windows 7 laptop, installed drivers - Transmits at 130Mbps!!!
[thinking it's a router issue with Macs only, so then...]
5. Turned on wifi at the newer Mac Mini Server (2010) - Also transmits at 130Mbps!!!
[thinking it's Mac OS "registering" my card capabilities as the old 54g card somehow, so then...]
6. Installed fresh 10.6.8. No change.
[thinking it's driver compatibility issue with "IO80211family.kext" version 3.2 (in 10.6.8), so...]
7. Tried the Lion and Mountain Lion versions of kext above (edited as they don't natively see the AR9280) - Not compatible - No card found.
[thinking that a beer would be really good to clear my head, so...]
8. Beer, followed by sleep.
So the card is fine, antennas are fine, router setup is fine (at least for all other machines). It must be one of two things:
A: MacMini (Late 2006) hardware limitation of some kind - Although I have seen others with this upgrade online.
B: Driver/kext issue.
Anybody brave enough to take a stab at this?
Respect -

Thanks for the effort guys -
Tried these two suggestions at the same time, by disconnecting all wireless devices, and setting the AEBS to 11n 5GHz only, and rebooting AEBS and the Mini. Auto channel is the only option in 5GHz - and it chooses channel 100.
Same story: 65Mbps
I'm onto another theory now - The card is not an Apple branded Atheros card, although System Profiler accepts that it is (see above screencaps). It has the same chip, but not the same branding. Note the "Card type" is reported Airport Extreme (0x168c, 0x1c71). In other reports I have seen the second half should be 0x8f for the AR9280 card.
What also bothers me is that "Locale" is "Unknown". On the original 54g card it was "FCC". Perhaps this prevents the card from using its full capabilities?
But the main issue I can't get my head around is that in other failed upgrade efforts I have seen while searching - their card is just not recognized or unsupported, etc. My card works - but not full speed.

Macbook pro and wnr834b gets only 130 link speed

i have a macbook pro with the "n" enabled and when i connect to my wnr834b which is an "n" router i only get link speed at 130 instead of 270 which it should be and what it is with all my other computers in the house. how do i get my mbp to connect with 270 link speed? i have the security disabled and have the channels set to auto. please help.

Here's the odd thing: in Windows XP Pro (under Boot Camp,) the wireless adapter connects @ a very stable 270mbps. On my PowerBook G4, with an nQuicky cardbus card ( http://www.quickertek.com ), it also connects at a stable 270mbps. I've got a Belkin Wireless N router.
Buffalo Technology has released a dual-band wireless router, operating at simultaneous 2.4gHz and 5gHz frequencies. Wireless N nFiniti Dual Band Router
Message was edited by: three days at sea

SATA link speed

Hi, this topic didn't appear to be up here yet, so I'm going to ask it. When did the white MacBook switch to the SATA 3.0 Gb/s standard? I recently updated my hard drive to one that has 3.0 capability, but the link speed in the System Profiler says 1.5 only.
Every bit of research I've done tells me that SATA hardware is forward- and backward-compatible, meaning the only thing standing between my new hard drive and its full capability is the MacBook's firmware.
I noticed a recent firmware release for MacBook Pros that "unlocks" the faster standard, and it also mentioned that the newer white MacBooks have it already set up no problem. So my question is: Which model is the earliest capable of SATA 3.0 Gb/s? Also, if my late-2007 MacBook is not compatible...why is that? What is actually responsible for this limitation, if not firmware?
Thanks.
P.S. Your login link malfunctioned in Safari ("404 - We can't find the page you're looking for"). I had to use Firefox to post this message...my Mac was disappointed. Better get your "geniuses" on that

Ah yes, I admit now to have forgotten to search the MacBook Pro discussion posts. That's the only place I now see a date mentioned.
And indeed, this afternoon Safari allowed me to log in, after a week or so of "malfunctioning."
Thanks for the answer, but I would still like to understand what part of the computer is responsible for the 1.5 Gb/s limitation, since serialata.org clearly states that its hardware is forward compatible.
You have an impressive collection of devices; can I have one? :P

I have 300 stores and I'm looking for a global QOS config that would shape/policy the bandwith based on a % of the detected ISP link speed

Hi,
We have 300 stores with mostly the same router config.
The router in each store is a cisco 891 router capable of doing QOS.
Each of our store is connected to internet through a local Internet Service Provider (ISP). They all have different ISP.
Each store has different Internet plan with different speed, some are DSL, other are using cable modem.
The connection between the router and the modem is 100Mbps. But the real speed after the modem will be different depending of the Internet plan the store is using. Exemple : 20Mbps download / 2Mbps upload.
I'm looking for a standard QOS config that would be put in each routeur and that would shape/policy the bandwith based on a % of the detected ISP link speed. The goal here is to prevent a single desktop computer of the store to take all available bandwith of the ISP link because of youtube , cloud photo upload, etc.
Because the wan of the router is in the modem at 100Mbps, I cannot use this bandwith indication for the % calculation. The ISP link speed (after the modem) is much lower than that.
In other words, I dont want to set specific qos value or bandwith manual value in each of my 300 router. Especially because the ISP speed is not the same in each site, it's a big job and it's changing all the time. Stores owner boost their link, etc.
So, Is there a way within the router to detect the Wan real max speed and to assign dynamically % of the deduced value and assign it to different policy-map rules, etc.
regards
Jonathan D

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I'm unaware of any (one) "built-in" feature that will do what you're desire. (BTW, I don't believe PfR, as mentioned by Matt, will do what you desire either, but I've haven't used it in several years.)
I was looking to address a somewhat similar problem several months ago, and believe I could construct dynamic QoS shaping using an embedded device script working with IP SLA monitoring. However, the "problem" site (using a cable modem) closed, so I didn't pursue it further.
An alternative approach would be to use as few policy models as possible. For example if there are sites with 2, 3 or even 5 Mbps uploads, you might use a 2 Mbps shaper for each. Of course, sites with more available bandwidth won't obtain the full advantage of it, but your maintenance support will be easier. Conversely, especially for cable modems, running under their nominal speed might provide much more predictable performance, as HFCs are generally much more variable in their actual available bandwidth, moment to moment.

When using Network Utility, does Link Speed tell you the actual speed of the network?

I'm trying to see whether a power line adapter I installed in my home network is faster accessing the internet than the WiFi from my Time Capsule.
Using Apple's Network Utility, my power line/ethernet connection reads as being 1Gb/s, which is obviously much faster than the 130 Mb/s of the WiFi:
But are those the actual speeds my iMac is receiving, or are those just what the specs of the device I'm using should be receiving (as in "ideal, what-the-manufacturer claims the speed should be")?

Are you sure you only want to test internet speed?
Internet speed is affected by many factors that are beyond your control - it is also likely that the internet connection is one of the slowest parts of your network.
You may be on an ISP connection that has 'contention' e.g. a shared connection across many users - their use can effect what rates you get. You will probably see different rates for the time of day too. When everyone gets home & starts watching Netflix you can see drops in speed.
Powerline could be many times faster than the internet connection, in which case you will see no improvement because the bottleneck is not the local network - it's the internet.
To truly see if the powerline adaptors are faster you should take the internet out of the equation. It's fairly simple to do if you have a device on your network that supports file sharing. Ideally you would use another Mac connected via ethernet to the network (that should remain the same in all tests). A Time Capsule could be used if you can write data to a sharepoint.
Copy a large file onto that destination & time it.
Repeat on wifi.
It's best to shutdown any background apps to be sure that other items are not hogging all the data transfer. Take many tests to get a decent average.
Divide the file size by the time taken to see a rough figure for the MB/s (MegaBytes per second) bear in mind that network transfer is usually measured in bits/second, so they won't be the same as the link speed figures.
This is generally smart enough to convert if you give it the correct units…
http://www.wolframalpha.com
e.g. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=28MB%2Fs+in+mb%2Fs
If you have multiple Macs, iPerf is a free tool to test if you are capable in the command line. JPerf is a version with a UI (needs Java installed).

How does AnyConnect client calculate its Link Speed? (Windows 7)

I'm curious about how the AnyConnect client determines what its default Link Speed is, upon initialization?
For example, from behind my home firewall, if I have a client that's physically connected to a 1Gbps uplink, when I launch the AnyConnect client, Windows Task Manager shows me a Link Speed of 9 Mbps for my AnyConnect connection.
However, if I also launch an AnyConnect connection from another machine on my home LAN, connected via 300Mbps WiFi, Windows Task Manager will only show me around a 1 Mbps Link Speed.
How does the AnyConnect client calculate its Link Speed upon connection?   Does it take a percentage of the available upstream bandwidth?
My home ISP bandwidth is 50Mbps down/12 Mbps up.   My corporate ISP (where the ASA I'm connecting to resides) it 50Mbps bi-directional.

For PHP, if you want to handle data in UTF8, NLS_LANG must be set to
"<language>_<territory>.UTF8", where <language> and <territory> are your
preference. There is few difference between ODBC and OCI called by PHP
in this case as both need to set NLS_LANG to UTF8. If you are familiar
with OCI and expect better performance, you can do so. But if you want
to make the application be portable in terms of data source, ODBC is an
appropriate choice.
Data source doesn't matter the encoding of client. The character set of
client is determined by how client calls ODBC functions SQLBindParameter
or SQLBindCol. If the client specifies SQL_C_WCHAR, data is exchanged in
UTF-16 independent from NLS_LANG. If it is SQL_C_CHAR, data is in
NLS_LANG encoding. Unicode ODBC client binds data with SQL_C_WCHAR, that
is exactly the case of MS Access 2000. On the other hand, because PHP
binds data with SQL_C_CHAR, NLS_LANG is taken as the encoding for data
manipulations

Setting Link Speed on VPN Virtual Adapter

The link speed for the VPN Adapter used by the VPN Client is normally 1GB. Does anyone know how to chnage this? Some of my users are trying to use the feature in Outlook that will block large attachments when connected to a slow (dilaup) connection. Outlook however sees tha 1GB connection and does not block the attachments.

With a dual band AirPort Extreme, both the 2.4 GHz band and 5 GHz band are being broadcast with the same network name. A computer, or your AirPort Express, will connect to the band with the best (strongest) signal.
Without knowing anything about the layout of your home and location of your devices, my guess would be that the extending AirPort Express sees a better signal at 2.4 GHz, so that is what it extends. Remember, the AirPort Express cannot extend both the 2.4 GHz band and 5 GHz band at the same time.
If the iMac is closer to the AirPort Express than it is to the AirPort Extreme, it's going to pick up the signal from the AirPort Express.
Is that a possibility?

Link speed on 2602 in Bridge mode

Hi
I need to create a number of bridges on a installation, where i need to use some exsisting 5GHZ antennas
I can only connect one 5Ghz antenna on each Access-point.
What is the Max link speed then using a single Antenna - in the best signal senario?
/Lars

with one antenna, you'll only get one Spatial Stream, so you will only get ~74Mbps a bit more if you do channel bonding.
HTH,
Steve
Please remember to rate useful posts, and mark questions as answered

Macbook Core2Duo with N Capbilities not showing N Link Speed

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

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.

Link speeds showing wrong, terminal command needed...

Hi, I have what is either a bug in 10.4.10 on my Mac Pro, or something else wrong.
In the Network Utility, my Ethernet (en0 and en1) both show incorrectly as 10Mb links.
They should be, and are, 1Gb.
Plugging my MBP into the ports shows this as true, as does my Fluke meter.
So...is there a way to show this info in the terminal to see if it's a GUI mistake or other issue?
I don't know if that's the only way - or even a good way to test, so if anyone has better ideas, I'm all ears.
I'm concerned as I just had a new logic board installed, and don't know if it's faulty.
Scott

We are experiencing the same issue on every Mac Pro that we have and they are all running 10.4.10. (We just received 25 for campus and more are on the way). It happens booted to a netboot image as well as a production OS.
To answer your question, you can open terminal and type:
ifconfig en0 | grep media
or en1 if you are using the seond nic card. Next to media you will probably see autoselect (10baseT/UTP).
you can change the link speed from here that will work as long as the machine isn't restarted by typing:
sudo ifconfig en0 media 1000BaseT
to force the speed to gigabit or you can change it in System Preferences.
Obviously annoying and can be a time waster, especially if you are dropping an 8 GB image on a machine and it should take 15 minutes and it takes over 2 hours! Hope we get an answer soon.

"Negotiated Link Speed" question to make informed decision on upgrading my hard drive

This is my first post on any help forum I've made in a while as I have usually found answers if I looked hard enough. I am glad I caught and investigated this detail before buying anything that may not improve. What I really want to do is top my macbook out. I'll try to provide as much useful info I can and appreciate what clear insight anyone has for me.
While comparing the specs of my current hard-drive to the SSD ones, I couldn't help but notice these line items:
Link Speed:    3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed:    1.5 Gigabit
While I spent a great deal of time researching similar concerns I could not find the answers that I needed, or made any sense. I'm going to include the hardware specs of my system to make this easier for anyone who is more knowledgeable about what is causing the 1.5 limit. My current stock hard drive is a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 SATA.
Serial-ATA:
NVidia MCP79 AHCI:
Vendor:    NVidia
Product:    MCP79 AHCI
* Link Speed:    3 Gigabit
* Negotiated Link Speed:    1.5 Gigabit
Description:    AHCI Version 1.20 Supported
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:    MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:    MacBookPro5,4
Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:    2.53 GHz
Number of Processors:    1
Total Number of Cores:    2
L2 Cache:    3 MB
Memory:    8 GB
Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:    MBP53.00AC.B03
SMC Version (system):    1.49f2
All I am looking to do is top out my system hardware wise. I already maxed the RAM and was interested in getting an SSD. Before I do....I need to know why the 'negotiated link speed' is not reading 3gb as well, and if it's something I can correct. If I upgrade to a 6gb SSL and the value still reads 1.5 I'll have wasted my money. Thanks all.

I looked in as many sources as I could find, and didn't see any 'published' link speed for my macbook. I am led to believe that it is 3gb based on the system report. Since my 5400rpm drive cannot physically achieve much less than 1gbs, if what your saying is true (which is sounds to me that you know what you're talking about).
With this understanding, even if a 7200rpm drive can't saturated the 1.5gb, and even if my Macbook data *may* not be able to exceed 3, would it be logical to say that an SSD would gives me 3x the speed if I upgrade? I'm just looking to get the most out of my computer with the current processor and the 8gb of RAM. If it makes the music software, opening/closing programs, reboot, start-up, shutdown and things like that more noticeably 'snappier'. I can be comfortable with the investment.
"The bottleneck is the drive's best-case transfer rate."
I would like to know how to go about determining this. I also need to know if I have to limit my choices to an SSD based on the recommended upgrades for my specific computer:
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?&model=353&type=Internal+Drive&sort =pop
or if I can get a discounted one such as this:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0364781
Speed and compatibility. Before I upgraded to this macbook from my PC, I was chasing incompatibility issues all over the place and got to spend less than 10% of my time actually working on music/video production. If only I had know then what I know now….but that's why I gotta do my homework before buying everything these days

802.11n Can't get 270mbps link speed on Macbook

Hi,
I have a Netgear DGN2000 802.11b/g/n Modem/Router and I have tried, and failed, to get my Macbook to sync at 270mbps. I have set the router to this speed in the setup page, but the network utility has me consistently connected at 130mbps. Is there something I need to enable? Or could the problem lie with the router. I have no other draft n spec machine to test on. Is there anyway other than network utility to see what the router is outputting?
Thank in advance

a brody wrote:
130 mbps is still faster than 802.11g. I suspect the problem is with your router's implementation of 802.11n. It is still a draft standard. Also if your connection is in any way open, it will slow down with each additional machine on the network. Check your router's firmware, and check what happens if only one machine is on the wireless network.
Network Utility reports 130 mbit/sec, and that's just the theoretical limit. I don't believe that's necessarily any measure rate. I think what some people are upset is that it doesn't *report* the full 300 mbit/sec for "link speed" like you see on the 802.11n enabler page:
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/d4141airportenablerLM.png
In any case, there's no way that it would be able to stress out a residential internet connection, although some people probably do home networking (I don't).

What is Link Speed?

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