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Airport extreme's WIFI speed is less than half of the Ethernet speed(Bridge mode)

Ookla Speed test:

1. modem LAN to WAN of Airport Extreme(A1408), LAN of AE to MacBook = 583Mbps.

2.AE 5GHz WIFI to Macbook=190Mbps.


The AirPort Extreme is acting as a "bridge", I'm using a separate name for the 5 GHz wireless network on the AirPort Extreme and even turn off the WiFi function of the Cable modem to make sure there is only one 5G wireless network in my house, and Macbook is just next to the AE to get the highest WIFI speed from AE.


What shoud I config the AE to imporve the WIFI speed and ideally what is the max WIFI speed from AE?

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jul 30, 2022 10:59 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 30, 2022 11:52 AM

Theoretical max speed at 5 GHz for the now obsolete AirPort Extreme is about 500 Mbps. But, that's theoretical. Remember that WiFi is Half-Duplex, so the actual throughput speed is going to half or less than the theoretical transmit speed. So, call it maybe around 200-250 Mbps best case for WiFi speeds.


By now, you might be thinking that there is lot of good old fashioned lying when it comes to WiFi performance claims...and you would be correct.


So, your figure of 190 Mbps is not bad. The AirPort is at least 9 years old and as much as 11 depending on when it was placed into service and some significant fall off in performance would be expected after 6-7 years of use.


If you have the time, you could experiment with different WiFi 5 GHz channels manually to see if your guess might be better than the guess of the AirPort Extreme.......(which is supposed to take a look at available channels and choose the best at the time).


Otherwise, I would not spend much time trying to figure out if some other "magic" setting for the AirPort might exist. For a 9+ year old product, it is doing pretty well.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 30, 2022 11:52 AM in response to JQ16

Theoretical max speed at 5 GHz for the now obsolete AirPort Extreme is about 500 Mbps. But, that's theoretical. Remember that WiFi is Half-Duplex, so the actual throughput speed is going to half or less than the theoretical transmit speed. So, call it maybe around 200-250 Mbps best case for WiFi speeds.


By now, you might be thinking that there is lot of good old fashioned lying when it comes to WiFi performance claims...and you would be correct.


So, your figure of 190 Mbps is not bad. The AirPort is at least 9 years old and as much as 11 depending on when it was placed into service and some significant fall off in performance would be expected after 6-7 years of use.


If you have the time, you could experiment with different WiFi 5 GHz channels manually to see if your guess might be better than the guess of the AirPort Extreme.......(which is supposed to take a look at available channels and choose the best at the time).


Otherwise, I would not spend much time trying to figure out if some other "magic" setting for the AirPort might exist. For a 9+ year old product, it is doing pretty well.

Airport extreme's WIFI speed is less than half of the Ethernet speed(Bridge mode)

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