Surface Pro WiFi Latency

[mathman]

I've noticed that other people have been posting about the Pro's WiFi dropping a connection; however, I'm having a different issue.

I'm running on a very fast network that is almost never congested. I ran speedtest.net's test and I'm getting about 2-3 Mbps down and 30-35 Mbps up. I tried different sites, nothing changes. I even loaded up my MacBook Pro on the same network at the same time and I'm getting 30+ down on that MacBook.

Any ideas? Is this software? Hardware? Should I try to exchange it?

Thoughts are appreciated.

MM

 

[ArnoldC]

You can't make this "test" anf point a finger on the Surface (not saying that you did), because there are too many factors with such "test."

 

[souldier]

No idea. I find the surface works at par with my other devices and so I am not really complaining. Aside from the tests, how do you find the performance of the wifi? Try not to allow the tests to affect you too much.

One thing I found strange was the network/wifi adapter seems to be made be a cheaper company (Marvell Avastar)) which I was pretty sad about, because I thought they'd use more premium components rather than cut costs. Even the onboard sound card is not so great. On contrast, the Acer W700 uses a quallcom wifi adapter and a realtek HD sound card which perform significantly better in my comparison tests. I still love the and prefer the Pro though

 

[Soylent]

Run the ICSI Netalyzer. This thing has helped me find many obscure issues with my network: ICSI Netalyzr

 

[Rvacha]

IMHO the Marvell 88W8797 (Bluetooth + 350N WiFi used by Surface) is junk. With my Wedge paired I am lucky to get 35Mbps (“speed” as reported by Windows) with frequently drops as low as 13Mbps while every other device I own gets 300-400Mbps on the same access point. The Wedge sometimes gets laggy, but not often. With the Wedge turned off (or Bluetooth disabled on the SP) the best I've seen is 130Mbps – not even as good as a G speeds. It seems that there are two WiFi modes; the mouse-off-pathetically-sub-par mode and the mouse-on-hideously-slower-than-DSL mode. For now I've got BT turned off and my Wedge is gathering dust. If there was a way to disable BT in BIOS I would try that just to see what happens.

My primary AP is a Cisco/Linksys E4200 N router (but I only use the AP function). It has been rock solid, but when I run inSSIDer on the SP it reports that one of the two channels is oscillating on and off. This doesn't happen on my other devices. With the Wedge paired the behavior is the same, only speed drops.

What I am trying to say anecdotally is if you have BT paired, try turning off BT on the SP and see what happens

 

[J515OP]

I agree about the Marvell seeming less than optimal. Maybe it is exactly that, a case of optimization. Hopefully MS can optimize its implementation and things will greatly improve.

 

[ArnoldC]

This is a serious issue (personally, of course) that I will bear if using the Surface Pro, that I wouldn't mind on the Surface RT. If I'd buy the Pro and use iSCSI to connect to our office Synology and run Hyper-V, the bandwidth limitation could (I can't say just yet as I don't own one) be a serious show stopper.

I'm connected to the forum and posting right now using Ubuntu 12.10 running on Hyper-V with the image on the Synology 712+ configured as iSCSI and the Windows 8 using the iSCSI Initiator.

At home, I have a Windows 8 Pro running off Hyper-V on a Synology 212j configured as iSCSI and I'm so pleased with the performance. Beats the Ubuntu 12.10.

 

[johnwalk]

My coworker and I just found that there is an update to the marvel driver when done from Device Manager. It installed fine.
I cannot test speeds yet from the office, but it is confirmed that he can now tether his Galaxy Nexus and couldn't before.
Not sure why Windows Update didn't advise about the driver.
New version is:
14.69.24019.88

I will speed test it tonight.

Anyone tested the updated driver?

 

[johnknee]

Thanks johnwalk. I updated the Marvel driver and now can tether my Samsung Galaxy Nexus (aOS 4.2.2). Before the update, I was getting limited connection.