Airport Extreme slowing down my connection?

[Tyrion]

Hi all,

I'm currently paying my provider for 50 down and 5 up. I've got a brand new Airport Extreme (latest gen) plugged into the cable modem; my MBP is situated about five meters from the base station and is reporting perfect signal strength. The weird thing is, when I browse the web wirelessly over the Airport connection, I get terrible speeds - only up to 25 down, according to speedtest.net, so only HALF of what I'm paying for. I was thinking it might be my ISP's problem, but when I plug the cable modem directly into my MBP, the speeds are perfect and I'm getting my 50 down easily. So, obviously the very new and very expensive Airport Base Station is the problem here. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? The modem might be partly to blame too, it's branded as "ubee", which is something I've never heard of before...

I'd be grateful for any advice!

 

[dmmcintyre3]

Does it do the same thing with a ethernet cable directly from the Airport to your MBP?

 

[Tyrion]

I don't have another ethernet cable handy right now, but I'll definitely try this, thanks.

 

[SidBala]

You might be surprised if you were expecting to get 300 mbps that the router states as its maximum.

Check the chart here:

SmallNetBuilder

Are you having any other problems like packet loss, huge ping spikes etc? If not, there is probably nothing wrong with your router. That is probably the best it can do in your environment.

 

[Tyrion]

The pings with the AEBS are horrible, like 40-50 ms. If I just connect the modem to my MBP via the Ethernet cable, my pings are rarely higher than 20 ms. Interestingly, pingtest.net wasn't able to test for packet loss. It didn't detect any packet loss, it was just plain unable to test for it. No idea if this means anything.

I also set up a separate 5Ghz-network in the Airport-utility and connected to it - again, the issues persist. Signal strength is optimal, speeds are pretty much halved compared to what I'm actually paying for.

EDIT: This helped my ping: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11321416#11321416
But speeds are still baaaaad.

 

[dmmcintyre3]

The "issue" is your internet is faster than real world WiFi speeds. Just plug in a ethernet cable when you download large files. I'm pretty amazed you get 25mbps over wifi, I never get above 15-18 on WiFi (G with a old Linksys, my N linksys overheats) to another computer in the house. N WiFi has higher latency than G in my testing. Plus the encryption adds some latency.

Is there any other wifi networks in range? If so, put yours on the channel with the least networks or if there is none multiple channels in a row, put yours in the middle of the hole.

My G router is faster than my N router and I was closer to the N when I teste it.

 

[Tyrion]

I disagree. I've just run some benchmarks on my parents' setup (same ISP, same bandwidth, same modem, slightly older AEBS), and this was the result:


Granted, this benchmark was taken right next to the AEBS - but at home, I only get 30Mbps at the most when I'm next to the router. So something must be wrong with my AEBS. I'll try to get a refund.

 

[SidBala]

I disagree. I've just run some benchmarks on my parents' setup (same ISP, same bandwidth, same modem, slightly older AEBS), and this was the result:


Granted, this benchmark was taken right next to the AEBS - but at home, I only get 30Mbps at the most when I'm next to the router. So something must be wrong with my AEBS. I'll try to get a refund.

Yeah get it replaced or refunded. However, the other guy is correct. Wifi is very heavily dependent on the environment. The same router can perform absolutely dismally in your house and yet do very well in your parent's house.

If your replacement has the same problem, then I would suggest you try a different router. I would recommend the Netgear WNDR3700.