Home network download speed varies considerably

Question

Home network download speed varies considerably

My internet provider is ATT Uverse. I use their dsl box and have it connected to a current Airport Extreme. It reliable gives download speeds of 5.5-6 mb/sec in the upstairs part of the house where the hardware is located. Downstairs I have an airport express hooked up to extend the network and use AirPlay on my sound system. Even with this, in the back downstairs bedroom download speeds are usually under 1 mb/sec. I bought another Airport Extreme and put it in the downstairs room with the lousy reception. The download speed there is sometimes 5-6, sometimes under 1 even when the main base station is showing download speeds of 5-6 mb/sec. So the problem is the base station has a good steady signal, but the room with the "slave" airport extreme varies widely independently from the "master". Any thoughts about why this is happening?

Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on Nov 24, 2015 3:05 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

148,435 points

Nov 24, 2015 3:46 PM in response to Anthony Siciliano

The issue is most likely the placement of your extending AirPort base station. It cannot "boost" the bandwidth when located in an area of poor reception of the station that it is trying to extend. Please check out the following AirPort User tip for details on optimum base station placement for extending a Wi-Fi network.

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Answer 2

Nov 24, 2015 4:45 PM in response to Tesserax

But what confuses me is this: the master base station always has a download speed of about 6mb/s. The download speed of the area of "poor reception" varies from 1-6mb/sec. If the master signal is always putting out the same stregnth signal, why is the reception varying so much in the area of "poor reception". Sometimes it's great, other times not, and the performance doesn't correlate with the download speeds of the master base station.

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

148,435 points

Nov 25, 2015 9:53 AM in response to Anthony Siciliano

Most likely it's because there is some form of Wi-Fi interference in that area or between the two stations that is the problem.

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Answer 4

Nov 25, 2015 10:06 AM in response to Anthony Siciliano

Your network will operate much more reliably and consistently if you can connect the "main" AirPort Extreme to the "remote" AirPort Extreme using a wired Ethernet cable connection. Is that something that you could consider installing?

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