Can Airport Extreme actually deliver 100+ mbps speeds?

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Can Airport Extreme actually deliver 100+ mbps speeds?

Comcast recently upgraded many of their customers' service plans to 105mbps internet speeds. I am one of those customers. When I directly plug my macbook into my cable modem, I get over 100mbps speed. When I turn on my Airport Extreme (last years model) base station and check the speeds, the fastest it will broadcast is 33mbps, even if I'm right next to it. I'm using WAP2 security. Is there anything I can do to allow it to broadcast faster speeds wirelessly? Thank you for any input! MG

OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Oct 26, 2014 2:07 PM

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Answer 1

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Matt Clifton

Level 7

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Oct 26, 2014 2:10 PM in response to mpgreenberg

Yes, the Airport can do much faster speeds. The newest model, using 802.11ac, can theoretically reach 1.3Gbps (~1300Mb/s).

At 33Mb/s, I'd say there's something wrong with your Airport. Try resetting it to factory settings and try again.

Matt

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Answer 2

Oct 26, 2014 2:37 PM in response to mpgreenberg

If you connect the AirPort Extreme to your modem and then connect your Mac using an Ethernet cable to one of the LAN <--> ports on the AirPort Extreme, what speed do you get when you test this way?

The wired speed should be approximately the same as the speed when you connect your Mac directly to the modem, allowing for some normal loss that always occurs in the routing process.

(Be sure to turn off the wireless on your Mac before you connect the Ethernet cable).

Obviously, the wireless speed can never be any higher than the wired connection speed, so you would want to troubleshoot the wired connection first, before you attempt to troubleshoot wireless speeds. Get the wired speed up to 85-90 Mbps, then we can work on wireless connection speed, which always involves more voodoo than science.

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