Airport Extreme 2013 PPPoE Low Performance on Gigabit Connection

I have the exact same problem.

My speed in Configuration 1 is 511 MBits/s

My speed in Configuration 2 is 230 Mbits/s

I am also interested to know if this is a software or a hardware problem.

Thx!

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!!

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.

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!

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.

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!

Also i have a friend wich has a very very very cheap router : http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-Wireless-App-Enabled-Gigabit-DIR-636L/dp/B0081TXIXI . This cost 34 $ man !

Same connection same provider he gets a 462 Mbp/s wich is close enough. But me that i paid almost 7 times i get half the speed.

Now you understand?

I have exacly the same problem !!! On direct connection i have 700 mbps, and after i conect the same configuration through Airport extreme, my max speed is no more than 250 mbps. What can we do ?

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 ...

pls help !

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.

Ok . Thanks for the answer . 😟

Hello LaPastenague,

I see that many others have encountered this problem and was wondering if there is a solution for it.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5571049?tstart=90

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5214621?answerId=22648632022#22648632022

In this threads i see that the problem with AE is the duplex setting ?

Is there any chance that this issue will be fixed in the future? Or should I just buy an another router? 🙂