airdropmacos
Tried transferring 4gb file yesterday and seems to be taking such a long time. Anyone knows the transfer speed?
It may help to say that I'm using last year's AirPort Extreme.
EDIT: Two years later, I wonder: what about in 802.11ac? If the laptops supports 802.11ac but the router does not, what will the speed be?
If you don't want to spent money, then that rules out hardware upgrades, which means you are down to software. You are already running the latest OS (and anecdotally at least for anything reasonably up to date the received wisdom is that you gain a speed boost with new OS releases from Apple on the same hardware) which means you are down to configuration.
So, as you say you have never performed a rebuild and you have potentially 9 years of cruft kicking around gathering dust I would simply test out your backup strategy by ensuring you have copies of everything you need, and perform a fresh install, recovering back only that which you are sure you need and still use.
AirDropAirDrop for iOS is similar to the OS X counterpart. It allows you to share files over WiFi1 to nearby devices, such as photos, contacts or Passbook passes/tickets.
The 'Contacts Only' setting requires that you be logged in to your iCloud account, and you must have the sending device's Apple ID in your contacts.
The receiving device must accept a share, similar to OS X. A popup notification will appear when someone attempts to send you something.
1 (however Bluetooth must be powered for the initial connection to begin - the device sends files through WiFi, however the secure connection handshake is achieved through Bluetooth)
Sending a photo or a document to someone via text or email is fine. But if that someone is right next to you, a text or an email suddenly feels like too many steps. Enter AirDrop for iOS. It lets you quickly and easily share photos, videos, contacts — and anything else from any app with a Share button. Just tap Share, then select the person you want to share with. AirDrop does the rest using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. No setup required. And transfers are encrypted, so what you share is highly secure.
Best Answer
AirDrop works outside of whatever WiFi networks are around and doesn't need a base station. It is like a mesh network where all the devices just talk between each other. If nothing else is "sharing" the road - you get the full speed. The further away you are or the more interference, the slower it gets. AirDrop will work by passing the data from Mac to Mac so it will get the file there (although slower) if it has to jump once or twice along the way.
That being said, for two close machines, the transfer speed should be the max wireless speed between your two machines. Hard drives are almost always faster reading and writing than WiFi speeds, so the radio link is generally the slowest.
However, all of that is just theoretical. You can check your actual speed by opening Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor
Click the Network tab on the bottom and you should see stats about how fast the data is being sent and received. Detach from WiFi base stations to let AirDrop get all the hardware if you want the fastest transfers - leave it on if you need internet while dropping that large file.