After buying a replacement modem, my Airport Extreme (tower) crawls to 2Mbps every few days

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After buying a replacement modem, my Airport Extreme (tower) crawls to 2Mbps every few days

A few months ago, I realized that I've been paying $10/month to "rent" a cable modem from Comcast. So I turned it in and bought one from Best Buy. Zoom 5341J (http://www.zoomtel.com/products/5341J.html) It was basically the cheapest one that had DOCSIS 3.

Starting a couple days later, I noticed that my wireless connection was crawling. Around 2 to 3 Mbps. (Down from 28 or 29) After getting no help from tech support at Comcast, I decided to reset my Airport Extreme tower through Airport Utility on my Mac. This brought speeds back up to 28 or 29.

I need to repeat this process 3 to 4 times a week when I notice that speeds are slow. In the 2 years with the old modem, this never happened.

I don't have any wired devices so I haven't tested that. Details are as follows:

Airport Extreme 6th Generation

Firmware version 7.7.3

5 wireless users

Zoom 5341J modem

Airport Extreme 802.11ac, null

Posted on Sep 1, 2015 4:50 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 1, 2015 5:39 AM in response to pdizz

Let's see, everything was working and had been working fine with your old modem, and the problems started with the new modem. Does that pretty much sum up the situation?

Based on the information in your post, you have a defective modem. It is unfortunate that you do not have a wired device to test, since the very first troubleshooting step in cases like this is to connect a computer directly to the modem for a day or two and watch the connection. If the speeds drop, then you know that the modem is acting up and intermittently losing the signal speed that your ISP is providing.

If you have not changed the Ethernet cable that connects from the modem to the AirPort Extreme in a few years, try a new Ethernet cable.....since a good connection depends on 16 tiny copper contacts all lining up with each other perfectly.

The Zoom is a good modem.....I use the same modem with excellent results...... but there are always a certain percentage of products that can be defective or have intermittent issues.

I suppose that it is possible.....but also extremely unlikely......that the AirPort Extreme decided to start acting up on its own at exactly the same time that you added the new modem. If you think that might be the case, and you have an Apple Store near you, take the AirPort Extreme to them to let them check it out, but I suspect that the Extreme will perform perfectly there.

Please let us know how things work out for you.

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