Airport Extreme maximum throughput?

Question

Level 1

38 points

Airport Extreme maximum throughput?

I've recently upgraded my broadband to 1000 Mbps, and tested through direct connection to any of my computer, all reach over 950 Mbps both upload and download.

However, if I connect through Airport Extreme, I managed some maximum ~500 Mbps with a perfect 802.11ac connection, and 100 Mbps on LAN ports (connected in 1Gbps Full Duplex).

On the wireless side I could understand, in fact its quite good considering AE is just a AC1300 router. But why am I getting such low throughput on LAN ports? Is that a known issue?

Posted on Feb 22, 2017 7:57 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

152,103 points

Feb 22, 2017 8:49 AM in response to Macbrush

I couldn't agree more.

FWIW. When I recently tested the Layer 2 switch built into the Extreme using iPerf I was getting near Gigabit data transfer speeds between two hosts connected to that switch. Where there is significant reduction in throughput was when I ran similar tests through the LAN-WAN interface with NAT enabled ... which would be expected.

Reply

Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

152,103 points

Feb 22, 2017 8:34 AM in response to Macbrush

Check out the following SmallNetBuilder article on the performance of the 802.11ac AirPort Extreme base station to get an idea on what you should expect.

Reply

Answer 3

Macbrush Author

Level 1

38 points

Feb 22, 2017 8:33 AM in response to Macbrush

Thank you! Although they didn't test the wired switching performance, but as switching is done on CPU instead of chipset, it probably explain why LAN ports are so slow.

Reply

Answer 4

Tesserax

Level 10

152,103 points

Feb 22, 2017 8:39 AM in response to Macbrush

... also keep in mind that the 802.11ac AirPort Extreme came out in June 2013. Although it has gone through a few firmware updates, it hasn't really had any design changes since then.

Reply

Answer 5

Macbrush Author

Level 1

38 points

Feb 22, 2017 8:40 AM in response to Tesserax

But honestly, I would expect wire speed switching in such a high end (price wise) product.

Reply