Internet WiFi issues. Driving me nuts! Help!

[Dee123]

Hello all. I've just had a full fibre connection installed at 200mbps and am having strange issues with my Macbook Pro and connecting to the internet.
I'm hoping someone understands the issues and can help!

So, I've got a connection to the router on my Macbook and when I do a speed test in the upper room the best I can get is 26 mbps down and 16 mbps up. My iPhone on the other hand shows 102 mbps down and 20 up in the same bedroom location. When I move the Mabook near to the router the figures change drastically to 196 down and 24 up which leads me to suspect that this is a band issue. Sure enough I checked the band and the Macbook is using the 2.4 Ghz band in the bedroom and the 5 Ghz band nearer the router. I see that my 'location' in network settings is a really old profile (2022) and I've read that changing 'Location' in the network settings to Automatic will fix the issue. I changed this to Automatic, applied, and the connection goes to orange with 'No IP address' and no internet then Green connected - Wi-Fi is connected to (vodafoneXXXX) and has the IP address 192.168.1.118 but no internet. There is a DNS server address set at 192.168.0.1 and I've renewed the DHCP release etc. Router is showing information and IPV6 shows information also yet no internet connection. When I switch back to the old location it works fine. I have the exact same issue on two Macbooks.

Can anyone explain what 'Location' is, what changing this does and why it doesn't work?
Can I select the band I want manually?
Is there anything else I should set on the Macbook and/or router?




Macbook Pro(s) 9.1 - Sierra / Catalina

 

[MacsBug]

Hi Dee and welcome to the forum,

It looks like you have 2 things going on here.

1st thing is the network locations. This is a feature that most people will never use these days. Network Locations was used primarily when the you would move your laptop between locations such as home and work. Where each location has different requirements to connect to the associated network.

In your situation it appears that you may have created a profile back in 2022. If you want you can just change the location back to the one that was created in 2022, and then delete the Automatic Location. When you do this since there will only be 1 location, then Locations won't show up anymore under the  menu. but this won't cause any issues. You can learn how to delete the profile at : https://support.apple.com/en-us/105129

To explain why when you switched to automatic that you have no internet. From what you typed it seems that there is a subnet mismatch.

If your Macs IP address is 192.168.1.118 then the settings under wifi should be the following.

IP Address: 192.168.1.118
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Router: 192.168.1.1
DNS Server: 192.168.1.1

With these settings you should have internet access.

Now to go back to your speed issues.

Most likely this is a specification issue of the wifi card in your MacBook Pro vs the specifications of the Wi-Fi in your iPhone, and what the Specifications are of your router.

The Wi-Fi card in the 2012 MacBook Pro only supports 802.11n (450 Mbps). This gives you a up to 150 Mbps on the 2.4Mhz band, and up to 300 Mbps on the 5Ghz band.

It sounds like you have a newer router that most likely supports Wi-Fi 5 or later which has faster speeds if your device supports it.

As far as the 2.4Ghz vs 5Ghz bands. 5 GHz is a faster band, but has shorter range, where the 2.4GHz band is slower, but longer range. Your MacBook Pro will select the proper band for your location in reference to the distance from your router.

An example of this is in my home is with a new Wi-Fi 6E router, When I am in my den on my 2013 MacBook Pro I get about 150 down, on my 2019 MacBook Pro I get about 500 down, and on my iphone 15 Pro and my new M3Max Macbook pro which support Wi-Fi 6E I get about 1300 down.

I hope that this helps explain what is going on.