WiFi Speed Difference XP vs OSX

Anyone explain why I have such a huge difference in WiFi speed between booting XP (CNET speed test = 1975 kbps) and OSX = 575 kbps? Obviously same hardware (Dell 1395 wireless card) and network. Also one other strange observation is the orange light next to the wifi switch is brighter on XP than when on OSX. Are there any settings to check on OSX to make sure the card is operating properly?

 

There is a command line (terminal) utility that can give you detailed info on how your wifi card is operating in OS X. Follow the instructions here http://osxdaily.com/2007/01/18/airport- ... s-utility/

Then from the terminal enter the command "airport --getinfo" to see details. Example from my 1505:

Code:

AAO:~ kopsis$ airport --getinfo
     agrCtlRSSI: -63
     agrExtRSSI: 0
    agrCtlNoise: -96
    agrExtNoise: 0
          state: running
        op mode: station 
     lastTxRate: 130
        maxRate: 130
lastAssocStatus: 0
    802.11 auth: open
      link auth: wpa2-psk
          BSSID: 0:1e:58:0:1e:44
           SSID: kopsis-n
            MCS: 15
        channel: 1

 

Broadcomm94311 card here, using the HP Pavilion drivers on XP:
connecting to an adhoc net created on Macmini with 100Mbps wire to world
http://www.speedtest.net

WinXP-SP2: down 5296kbps; up 13879kbps; latency 6ms; distance <10 miles

OS-X 10.5.6: down 17393kbps; up 14696kbps; latency 27ms; distance ~100 miles

I would say they're more or less the same, speedtest.net redlines at 30Mbps.
I'm getting full strength signal, the base station is 3 feet away under the desk....

 

You are only testing your isp download/upload speed to/from the internet. its not your wi-fi speed. To test your wifi speed, download a big file from a fast server or put a big file on your local computer hardwired to a router and download it to your wifi connected computer

 

ahovis posted numbers suggesting a 3:1 difference in packet handling rates between
Windows vs. OSX on a "normal" cable/adsl connection. I don't see that difference.

Using the same ad hoc base station connected gigabit ethernet to a local server,
I pulled down a 400MB file using Safari in both WinXP-SP2 and OSX 10.5.6.
Average of 3 d/l each OS was: Windows 19.84Mbits/s, OSX 20.58Mbits/s.
Throttling possibly in the NAT of the ad hoc access point, but no significant
difference between the two OS. I'm not savvy enough with Windows ftp
clients to try that instead of http.

As I said before I'm not using the Dell wifi card, so I point the finger at
the card or the drivers. I offer this fly in the ointment too: there is a thread
elsewhere here on the sound system sleeping after 30 seconds and causing a
kernel panic on shutdown. Now I would expect a wifi card to be a bigger
power sucker than a sound chip, so is the fifi being sent to sleep too?
And causing these reports of intermittent connectivity? If it was sleeping
while waiting for ACK that would slow the thruput ....