IPhone wifi is half the speed of Mac when using an Airport Express

airportiphonemacwifi

My internet account with Comcast is 75 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up. To verify my internet speeds, I used SpeedOf.Me in Safari on my 2011 iMac and 2014 Macbook Pro which gave me 75-80 Mbps down and 10-15 Mbps up on both computers. To make sure I was getting similar speeds on my mobile devices, I installed the Ookla Speedtest app on my iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 which gave me 32-35 Mbps down and 12-15 Mbps up. Both iPhones are running the latest version of iOS 8.4.

My internet equipment and settings are as follows:

Motorola Surfboard SB6121 cable modem

  • Docsys 3.0
  • latest firmware
  • IPv6 only

Airport Express wifi router

  • 802.11n at 5GHz
  • WPA2 Personal
  • latest firmware

I tried reseting the Network Settings on the iPhones but that had no affect on the wifi speed. I tried restarting the Airport Express several times, one of which gave me 72 Mbps down on the iPhones but a few minutes later the wifi speed decreased back to around 34 Mbps on the iPhones.

Why is the wifi on my iPhone about half the speed of my Mac and how can I fix this?

Best Answer

Start off by eliminating variables. Test using speedtest.net in your Mac, and explicitly select the server. Do the same on your phone. Or test using speedof.me on the phone. Otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges - they use different servers.