Airport Extreme 2013 - downlink performance problems

This is apparently a fault in the AE.. if you have tried two and they both have the same issue there is a WAN throughput fault going on.. it has been reported in earlier versions occasionally but with nothing in particular as a cause of the problem.. setting the speed of the WAN connection to 100mbit is good.. put a small switch in between.. when ethernet timings are out.. a switch can fix it. just a cheap little 5 port is fine.

Beyond that for the time being replace the AE with something else. WAN to LAN throughput of 30mbps up and down is no heavy load.. any modern router should handle 300mbps with no problem.

Pick one from the list.

Near the top end where the throughput is better.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/74-wan-to-lan

LOL!! 😁

When I pull the switch out, we get 14-15 mbps down and 30 mbps up. Explain that one! 👿

You devil you!!

You have revealed something important but I have no way of fixing it in the AE.. because apple removed the functionality..in older version firmware I could set the WAN speed and also set full or half duplex.

I think you are looking at a switch issue.. it is not handling duplex properly. The proof is to use a managed switch.. or an old 100mbit hub.. these are as rare as hen's teeth.. I found one and keep it in a box for just this sort of nonsense. A hub will force the ethernet to half-duplex.. your switch will not do that.. unless it is managed where you can.

But it shows that for now.. until Apple get their act together and fix the multitude of firmware bugs in the AE.. get a different router and use the AE as a glorified WAP.

As a suggestion the TP-Link WDR3600 or 4300.. very good price for their capability.. or the Netgear WNDR3800 .. any of these will run an excellent 3rd party firmware called gargoyle..

This last point will be wiped by a mod but seriously how can apple release products so untested.

This is a great thread... and timely... as I've got a FIOS 25 up / 5 down (and when we scale, it will be 25/25). And I'm running an old TC (2012 2nd gen 'n') as my link to my Fiber-Ethernet drop. i've been working with my ISP to deal with Double NAT and while I'm still in double NAT mode, they switched me from a fully NATed address to a public IP (not static, and still NATed).

My property is an 120 year old home that has a lot of brick and wire plaster lathe (faraday cage) walls, that we are converting to a professional retreat. The key is to support 'ac' mode soon, as well as maintaining my 'mac centric' (Apple TVs in every room for AirPlay projection) computing model, running on a guest network, and an internal 'corp' network running network infra, as well the home automation and security stuff.

So a new AE looks to be the plan. Or not.

I already planned on having a switch upstream of the AE so I can debug stuff and possible split the signal to my 2012 TC that will be a 3rd 'private network' for my 'real job' (IT consulting), do my backups, and be a poor man's NAS server.

I chose a Netgear GS105e as it gave me VLAN and port mirroring capabilities (for debugging and security Analytics [my sub specialty]. But no port settings. May need to rethink that (I like the 105e's as they are inexpensive and great to toss in a debugging bag (although you need a Windows PC to drive them).

But upstream speeds are important, as we'll be hosting internet vid confs that will drive a lot of traffic out. Not being able to support full 25m out will be an issue.

Thanks for the info!

LaPastenague wrote:

get a different router and use the AE as a glorified WAP.

Do you mean connect the WAN port on the AE to a LAN port on the different router? Would this avoid the problem or, since data is still coming through the WAN port on the AE, still act as a bottleneck for wireless devices?