Airport Extreme 2013 PPPoE Low Performance on Gigabit Connection

Hello,


Configuration 1


I have a MacbookPro Retina 2013 + Thunderbolt <-> Ethernet adapter. I connect directly to my ISP via PPPOE with a normal network cable.


My speed test finished with 930 MBits/second when connecting the laptop directly to my network wall socket.


http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3102369759


Configuration 2


The same MacbookPro + Ethernet adapter but this time connected to latest generation Airport Extreme (the tall one) to one of the 3 LAN ports on the back.


The Airport Extreme has one gigabit port for WAN + 3 gigabit ports for LAN. It was configured to connect to my ISP with the same account, via PPPOE.


The Airport Extreme is connected to the same network wall socket with same normal network cable linked to the WAN port.


This time the speed results are totally different: 159 Mbits/ second. That's 6 times slower than the direct connection.


http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3103367833


Looks like the AirPort Extreme is slowing down my connection. Why could this happen? Is there something limiting the bandwidth inside the Airport Extreme?


Or is the hardware inside too slow to handle such speeds? I don't think so, otherwise why 4 gigabit LAN ports?


If you have any idea why is this happening please help me!


Thanks,

Robert

Posted on Nov 15, 2013 10:27 AM

Reply
16 replies

Dec 3, 2013 1:05 PM in response to Lambrino

The WAN to LAN throughput of the AE is not very good.


See proper testing done here.


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


The older Gen5 AE managed 430Mbps


The new Gen6 AE dropped to 325Mbps


This is done under ideal conditions.


The drop to 160-230Mbps may be due to pppoe adding routing load..


As you can see from the chart.. almost no routers can manage the full throughput you guys are getting.. and certainly those tests are done with the router doing as little as possible.. ie no firewall, qos etc. (not that AE have such advanced things as QoS).


And to actually get those high figures.. they use a hardware NAT which is programmed directly into the processor by broadcom etc.. but Apple do not use it.. if you turn off hardware NAT in most of those routers the figures would be halved. We often have no choice but to turn off hardware NAT because of the failure of things like port forwarding to work. Once you fall back to software NAT in the firmware the number of cpu cycles to handle the packets doubles at least.


To get full throughput at gigabit in a router that does more than Hardware NAT.. you will need something like a new i5 computer running a full package router software like FreeBSD or PFSense.


See hardware sizing for pfsense.. http://www.pfsense.org/index.php@option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49.ht ml


To get 500Mbps you need a 3ghz processor.. and I am not sure that even i3 can manage it.. not at >900Mbps.


Or you could Mortgage your house and buy some ISP cisco hardware..!!! You do realise that most ISP have links of less than 1Gb.


In my part of the world .. our government thinks of fast broadband as 25Mbps.. and you should feel lucky to get it.. you do feel lucky.. don't cha!!

Dec 3, 2013 2:11 PM in response to LaPastenague

Then Why they are saying that WAN AND LAN ports are gigabit? This is false advertising, right?


And no i am not happy at all, i was promised to get a gigabit router and this is not it, from website you provided i saw that at the same price or even lower i could get better product that does exactly what it says GIGABIT, not like the Airport Extreme where it says that it has gigabit lan and wan ports and in reality the speed is 200 mbps.

Dec 3, 2013 2:16 PM in response to LaPastenague

And i dont need to mortgage any house and no need to buy any ISP Cisco hardware or any of that, i just have to buy a normal router that does what it says it should do like :


- NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Router (R7000)(same price as the AE) WAN to LAN throughput : 931 mbps


-D-Link Wireless AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit Cloud Router (DIR-868L) (cheaper! ) WAN to LAN throughput: 924 mbps.


This speeds are close to gigabit ! Not the Apple Airpot Extreme!

Dec 3, 2013 2:21 PM in response to Lambrino

The LAN and WAN ports are gigabit.. but no domestic router can do what you are asking.. the fact that it has gigabit ports doesn't ever mean the routing speed is giabit.. none are.. the switch connection speed between client on LAN should be close to gigabit. That is what it is for.. and WAN speeds greater than 100mbit.


Netgear or Asus or Cisco or Dlink or TP-Link or any other brand.. can get 1000mbps out of gigabit ports.. sorry but I think you are expecting too much..


Gigabit means you can get more than 100mbit.. not that you will get 1000mbps.


And all of those routers manage it only in ideal circumstances.. as soon as you turn on firewall, QoS, etc.. that requires packet inspection.. even things as simple as port forwarding.. you are going to halve the speed.. so no domestic router does gigabit WAN to LAN throughput with any kind of actual useful features turned on.. it is not possible.. the CPU would have to do 3ghz and they would need PC size boards and power supplies.


And real Cisco.. (linksys is not used by ISP) cost $20,000 up for routers to handle gigabit.

Dec 3, 2013 2:26 PM in response to LaPastenague

Gigabit should mean 1000 mbps! not what you are say. the simply word Gigabit means : Gigabit Ethernet was the next iteration, increasing the speed to 1000 Mbit/s source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet


There is a big difference between the neatgear r7000 wich has a throughput of 931 mbps and the AE wich has 325 mbps right?


Why are you keep pushing with i dont know what hardware that has superman strenght. 931 mbps is close to the 1000 mbps wich is gigabit so a normal router can do it (in specific/ideal circumstances).


So what you are saying is Zero !


Thx for your time anyway!

Dec 4, 2013 4:43 PM in response to Remus Ratiu

And dont get me wrong, i'm not absurd, i don't want my lan connection to be exacly the same as the direct connection, i understand that, but i would find 450 - 500 -550 a normal lan speed after connecting through the Air port extreme. Befor buying the AE i thought that my provider will be the disapointment, not the most expensive, and new router from apple. I truly hope that some software update can fix this ...

Dec 5, 2013 1:00 AM in response to Remus Ratiu

There is nothing you can do.. Apple did not implement hardware NAT..


All the routers with the same chip as the AE.. eg the Asus.. RT-AC66U get such high speed due to hardware NAT.. but if it is not implemented in the Apple firmware there is no way it can achieve more than you get.. the moment the router is doing port forwarding or actually inspecting packets it will slow down dramatically.


You need a different router.. use the AE for Wireless AP and gigabit switch ports.

Jul 17, 2014 11:34 PM in response to nszabo15

Greetings,

I would recommend that you buy another router. As other people have posted, the AE 2013 model works very well as a wireless Access Point, gigabit Ethernet switch and USB drive server for TimeCapsule, but the performance of the router functions is very disappointing.

This is a device where there is an extremely high cost to pay for the ease of use.

After reconfiguring my network to use an AE 2013 with an external DSL modem, Internet access tanked. I gave up and switched back to my 2007 Draft-n, small-brand, ADSL modem-router. My old router takes care of DSL access, DHCP, NAT and hardware firewall functions, but I have given the Wifi job to the AE 2013, as that is where it excels. Plus, I am now able to get my Wifi AP in a much better location, far away from the electrical and RF noise of my wiring closet.

Of course, putting the AE 2013 in bridge mode (no routing functions) means you lose the ability to enable an Internet-connected Guest Network. This may or may not be a problem for you.

In my opinion, there are better 802.11ac standard devices at much lower cost. Some might take a little bit more effort to setup, but for most people, this will not be a frequent task.

Regards,

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Airport Extreme 2013 PPPoE Low Performance on Gigabit Connection

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