I’m finding my Internet download speed from my 2018 Mac Mini is circa 450Mbps over the LAN connection, whereas on my MacBook Pro Late 2013 I can only get circa 90-95Mbps over the Thunderbolt 2 LAN connection.
I’ve checked the settings, tried different LAN cables (inc the same on both machines). I know the Mac Mini is running a later NIC spec, but a 4 x difference in ‘Internet’ download speeds doesn’t seem correct. Any ideas on how to improve my MacBook Pro’s download/LAN performance?
#1 question: Is this using the exact same cable?
Any differences in the OS each machine is running? Software?
Mac Mini is running Mojave and MacBook Pro is running High Sierra.
MacBook Pro has some additional security software running. I’d be surprised if that was causing a 4 x slowdown in performance. I could try a clean Mac build to check also I guess.
Yes, I tried the exact same cable to make sure.
Can you test local LAN speed? Not internet, LAN.
So we can rule out cables, adapters, etc. as the problem?
I just tested the Apple Thunderbolt 2 adapter on my MBP15 and I get excellent LAN speeds:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 7] 0.00-1.00 sec 112 MBytes 943 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 1.00-2.00 sec 97.2 MBytes 816 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 2.00-3.00 sec 111 MBytes 929 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 3.00-4.00 sec 110 MBytes 923 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 4.00-5.00 sec 111 MBytes 935 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 5.00-6.00 sec 110 MBytes 921 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 6.00-7.00 sec 111 MBytes 934 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 7.00-8.00 sec 112 MBytes 941 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 8.00-9.00 sec 112 MBytes 939 Mbits/sec
[ 7] 9.00-10.00 sec 112 MBytes 937 Mbits/sec
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 7] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.07 GBytes 922 Mbits/sec sender
[ 7] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.07 GBytes 921 Mbits/sec receiver
I am hitting GBit limits, so cables, the adapter and LAN configuration are OK.
Both Network interfaces on the Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro show a link speed of 1 Gbit/s
A file transfer speed to a NAS via rsync showed the following results (let me know what command you ran and I can do the same if that helps):
Mac Mini
- 179843031 100% 12.47MB/s 0:00:13 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)
Macbook Pro
- 179843031 100% 9.74MB/s 0:00:17 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)
If you have two computers and the command line development tools, and a bit of know how, downloading the command line utility (distributed as C code) iperf is an excellent way to determine your true network throughput. You run the same utility as a server on one computer and a client on the other and it blasts traffic at as high a rate as it can (in TCP mode) or whatever rate you tell it (in UDP) mode.
I ran “iperf3 -s -D” on a Debian installation running on my NAS. On the MBP “ipfer3 -c debian.local”. iperf3 was installed through MacPorts.
But rsync is already showing us something… Your MBP is getting -22% speed. If everything is the same (switch, cable, CIFS/AFP,…), you should get similar values.
Go to your MacMini and do a huge file transfer with rsync (to even out effects) once with the built in NIC and once with the TB adapter. I wonder if those values are still apart.
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