Surface Pro - Marvell AVASTAR 350N wifi speed?

[Jay Slasher]

So i'm noticing that on a wireless N network that the surface pro caps out at 65mbps for me. Am I doing something wrong with the settings here or is the Surface not capable of higher network speed? I know most low powered devices like tablets and cell phones cap out at 65 but I assumed that the surface pro (being more ultrabook than tablet) would have a better transfer throughput.

 

[Jay Slasher]

seems like i can answer my own question, I can see my surface connected at 144mpbs at home now, whereas it was struggling to get past 25mbps yesterday....

 

[Cowboy]

I have just finished running a number of tests using a Cisco E2000 Wireless Router. I am about 10 feet away from the router in the same room.
I started out running in G/N mixed in the 2.5 Mhz band and was running at 65 mbps
Running in G/N mixed in the 5.0 Mhz band I run 133 Mbps
Running in N only in the 5.0 Mhz band I run 144 Mbps
This is pretty much in line with the evaluations of the Cisco wireless router I have read on the internet.
Incidentally the E2000 was one of the top wireless routers tested. Don't believe all the ad's proclaiming the "theoretical" connections speeds of 300 mbps.

 

[Jay Slasher]

I was able to see speeds of 162Mbps on my 5Ghz band N only Dlink router. However this was within 5-10 ft of the router, at around 20ft I was back down to 65, the range on this modem isn't necessarily the best.

 

[Garyjk]

in the network properties, my connection speed says 270mbps. using a cisco ea4500 router.

 

[dmorinwi]

Surface Pro 2 WiFi connecting at only 65Mbps (indicative of single MIMO stream) and is reporting to my access point that it only supports 802.11b/g/n instead of 802.11a/b/g/n. The Marvell radio is supposed to support up to 133Mbps (as it does not support short guard interval or channel bonding) using 2x2 MIMO. Wondering if the new driver that was released in December and then pulled was going to resolve this. My AP currently supports up to 300Mbps on each of it's 2 radios (2.4 & 5GHz). Signal strength measures strong and all my other devices that support 300Mbps connect at that rate. Understanding the radio in the surface doens't support this, I at least want the 133Mbps it does support.

 

[dmorinwi]

Found the issue. I use a wireless mouse (bluetooth mouse to internal bluetooth radio in Surface). When I turn on my bluetooth mouse, my connectivity speed drops by almost half as well as my signal strength. While Bluetooth in the early days was known to have this effect, it no longer should as they found away to make them play nice together as bluetooth plays in the 2.4GHz band as well. Assume this would not be an issue if I connected at 5GHz however, the driver does not allow me to set band preference unfortunately. Did see that update (that has since been pulled) did include WiFi and bluetooth updates. Hopefully this will resolve this issue.

 

[dmorinwi]

Found the issue. I use a wireless mouse (bluetooth mouse to internal bluetooth radio in Surface). When I turn on my bluetooth mouse, my connectivity speed drops by almost half as well as my signal strength. While Bluetooth in the early days was known to have this effect, it no longer should as they found away to make them play nice together as bluetooth plays in the 2.4GHz band as well. Assume this would not be an issue if I connected at 5GHz however, the driver does not allow me to set band preference unfortunately. Did see that update (that has since been pulled) did include WiFi and bluetooth updates. Hopefully this will resolve this issue. FYI... If you would like to test, after turning off you bluetooth device, allow several minutes for the radio speeds to negotiate back up to the higher rates.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Found the issue. I use a wireless mouse (bluetooth mouse to internal bluetooth radio in Surface). When I turn on my bluetooth mouse, my connectivity speed drops by almost half as well as my signal strength. While Bluetooth in the early days was known to have this effect, it no longer should as they found away to make them play nice together as bluetooth plays in the 2.4GHz band as well. Assume this would not be an issue if I connected at 5GHz however, the driver does not allow me to set band preference unfortunately. Did see that update (that has since been pulled) did include WiFi and bluetooth updates. Hopefully this will resolve this issue.

Do you have anymore information on the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth updates!? I get the same thing from using a Bluetooth audio receiver... in fact worse, it doesn't halve it, it kills it completely (literally drops to 0.01Mb/s) but strangely my Bluetooth mouse doesn't affect it at all!

 

[Rvacha]

I have the WiFi/BT driver updates, along with the latest firmware. Prior to these updates I had a spotty 130Mbps (sometimes it would run as slow as 60M) with no BT devices on, 65M with an Arc mouse connected. After these updates speed never goes above 65M with no BT devices connected and never above 35M with a BT device connected. Access point is a Cisco E4200. If my experience is any indication the drivers got pulled because they suck

I am tempted to upgrade to a Netgear Nighthawk or Asus RT-AC68U to see if performance improves (I realize the SP2 doesn't support AC, I am just trying to get it to behave as if it can actually support N) but both appear to be rather buggy ATM. Anyone try one of these?

 

[drolem]

Assume this would not be an issue if I connected at 5GHz however, the driver does not allow me to set band preference unfortunately. Did see that update (that has since been pulled) did include WiFi and bluetooth updates. Hopefully this will resolve this issue. FYI... If you would like to test, after turning off you bluetooth device, allow several minutes for the radio speeds to negotiate back up to the higher rates.

Set your router/AP to 5 GHz only.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Sorry if this has been explained above but can I clarify... is it possible to set the Surface to receive 5GHz only?

Also, did anyone every find out if the Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 have different chips? I somehow doubt it as I've heard of problems on both models.