Is there a software problem with Airport Extremes?

I have the same issue with the former generation of this router, I expect someone to find an answer since this is quite annoying.

Bye

I'm having a similar issue. I have TWC turbo cable in Manhattan. I get 20Mbps download speed when I connect a Mac directly to the modem via ethernet. When I use the current gen AirPort Extreme, my internet speed gradually decreases to unusable. Less than 1Mbps. Websites timeout before loading. My LAN still works, but internet crawls. Doesn't matter if a device is wired directly to Airport or wirelessly connected - internet crawls, if I'm lucky.

This is after weeks of things running perfectly with this airport. Over the past few days, I'm dying.

I spent time with TWC to make sure it wasn't on their end. Reset the modem. Ran signal tests. Rebooted everything. It's not an issue on their end. As soon as I plug directly into their arris modem, I'm golden. 20Mbps download again.

I hard reset my AirPort Extreme, and set it up as if it was brand new. But internet speeds still drop to slow to unusable when I'm going through AirPort Extreme.

Had some luck getting speeds up to usable by specifying DNS servers from TWC in airport, but this was false hope. Overnight, internet speeds were back down to less than 1Mbps.

Again, if I connect a mac directly to the modem, I'm getting 20Mbps speeds again, as I should.

I think that the issue is clear, internet speed gets droped by 3/4 when the airport extreme is used and no matter which reboot method is used the speed bump stays, I think that this is an issue that Apple should take seriously since as an user (as far as I know) the options to hack or modify the base station are quite limited and it has to do something with the data rate between the WAN port to the LAN port of the broad band modem, i put an older apple extreme station and things work quite well so the issue should be with the ethernet controller or physical port management and as users we cant in anyway find out what is happening inside the box.

Thanks,

Camilo

I think that the issue is with Airport Extremes from 2009 onwards, I used an old airport extreme (A1075) and it worked flawless so as you said it is a hardware or software problem and seeing that it happens also with the new airport is troublesome, I hope that apple sees this and provides a solution since the appliances are quite nice (and costly) and this particular issue is unacceptable.

Let´s see what happens....

...and finally a joke, they can sell the AE trhough the internet providers as speed limiters....new market for them...what a shame....

Does Apple even ready these comments...?

Extremely unlikely....since as you know from reading the Terms of Use Agreement for this area that this is user-to-user support forum.

If you want to reach Apple, you can do so as follows:

Apple - AirPort Extreme - Feedback

If you prefer to speak to a real person, contact Apple Support. You have 90 days of free phone support on a new purchase.

Contact Apple for support and service

Spent a very long time on the phone with a very helpful Apple support team member. We did a LOT of testing.

I had my network setup per Apple's exact instructions like this using two Airport extremes:

Wi-Fi base stations: Setting up and configuring a roaming network (802.11 a/b/g/n)

Support guy said to do it this way instead:

Wi-Fi base stations: Setting up and configuring an extended wireless network (802.11n)

I protested, insisting that the first way (hardwired) would give me better throughput. However, the trick worked. Internet was back to normal using the second setup described in the second article above. He explained that because my base stations are so close together (i live in a Manhattan apartment, so, small!) that it could've been causing the computers to jump from station to station and really screw things up.

I don't buy it, but he was right. Everything is working great now. I'm going to explore alternative solutions though. I want a wired connection in my second room.

Just an update... that network config that Apple helped me setup failed after many hours of being fine.

I've continued the coversation over on this other posting with Bob:

Roaming network Time Capsule and Express - internet drops out when I connect the Express by ethernet.

Having same issue. Found that downgrading AirPort Extreme firmware back down to 7.5.2 has helped tremendously. I read somewhere that 7.4.2 is better, however my AirPort doesn't have that firmware archived. Still looking into this issue.

This might be helpful to some . . . http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1218