Slow Wi-Fi with Surface

[Leica]

My Wi-Fi router is the Apple Airport Extreme (latest generation). On my MacBook Pro Retina if I copy files from my server I get speeds of around 18MB/s. On my Surface it is only at about 5MB/s.

Why so much slower? Isn't the Surface also 5GHz 802.11n?

Is there something wrong?

Thank you.

 

[leeshor]

There have been some widely reported issues with WiFi performance on the Surface. But you may want to try a channel change on your router to see if it makes a difference.

 

[R0bR]

I tried everything with my setup and I can only get between 4-5MB/s on the Surface. This is the only performance issue I have with the Surface because it affects streaming of HD video. At first I thought the Mobile HD app was having trouble with MKV's because every once in a while my video stream stutters. Add to that I stream the audio to my external speakers through Bluetooth which makes the audio out of sync a bit (doesn't happen with standard video files). I copied the MKV local, at a slow 4-5MB/s, and the video plays perfect. I'm pretty sure that the Surface could handle streaming the HD video if MS would fix this wireless throughput limitation. Perhaps in an attempt to fix the wireless connectivity issue they are limiting the throughput or something.

 

[magicrobots]

Yeah, I had problems with my Surface and other Win 8 machine dropping my wireless networks (both at home and at work) and I found that turning channel hopping of on the router and selecting the least populated channel made a huge difference in performance. I haven't had a dropped signal yet, and throughput is good. I haven't measured, but haven't felt that it's been slow either.

 

[Leica]

I tried everything with my setup and I can only get between 4-5MB/s on the Surface. This is the only performance issue I have with the Surface because it affects streaming of HD video. At first I thought the Mobile HD app was having trouble with MKV's because every once in a while my video stream stutters. Add to that I stream the audio to my external speakers through Bluetooth which makes the audio out of sync a bit (doesn't happen with standard video files). I copied the MKV local, at a slow 4-5MB/s, and the video plays perfect. I'm pretty sure that the Surface could handle streaming the HD video if MS would fix this wireless throughput limitation. Perhaps in an attempt to fix the wireless connectivity issue they are limiting the throughput or something.

Thanks for this helpful post. So I guess that this a known limitation/problem with the Surface.

By the way, I tried a friend's Acer W510 tablet on my network and the transfer speed was the exact same as the Surface's 4-5MB/s. The Acer W510 is a Windows 8 tablet based on the Clover Trail SoC - smaller and lighter than the Surface yet runs the full blown Windows 8!

I have another PC, which is the Intel NUC with the Intel 6235 Wi-Fi PCI card and that gets MacBook like 15-18MB/s speeds.

I wonder if the Surface and W510 are using only 2.4GHz?

 

[Mr.NK]

No, Surface uses 5Ghz too, but the Samsung ATIV Tab seems to be the only Arm/Atom-based-Tbalet (on Win) with a competitive wifi-speed (according to anandtech)

 

[bosamar]

I get good speeds on mine.

 

[Leica]

I get good speeds on mine.View attachment 231

You are getting bits and bytes mixed up! Note the capital (upper case) "B" = byte = 8 x "b"

 

[bosamar]

I don't understand your statement. MB and Mbps aren't the same?

 

[Leica]

I don't understand your statement. MB and Mbps aren't the same?

No. 1MB = 8Mb. Huge difference!

Like 16 oz = 1 lb or 12"=1'

Sadly both begin with a "b"

Obviously Wi-Fi even at the reduced speeds of 4-5MB/s (32-40Mbps) are sufficient for most people for surfing the net. But for people like me who want to view 1080p videos stored on my server it isn't enough!

 

[bosamar]

Now I see.

 

[GreatWindows]

Lol......that speed is perfectly fine 20 up and 17 down is more then enough speed.