Does Time Capsule limit download speed?

You cannot route at 980Mbps on a Time Capsule in router mode.

Sorry I know you wrote that is exactly what you did.. but no router with a 1 or 1.1ghz processor can route at that speed.

using speedtest app on the latest Apple TV 4K which comes with Gigabit Ethernet, I got only 450Mbps.

That is the exact measurement I would expect.

Look at the review of the identical hardware Airport Extreme.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32158-apple-airport-ex treme-80211ac-reviewed

This is done on early firmware.. and may vary a bit up or down depending on firmware but not a lot.

Routing Performance

All testing was done with the latest 7.7.1 firmware loaded and the 5.6.1 AirPort Utility. Throughput results are in Table 2 along with those for the previous two AirPort Extremes for comparison.

In fact to get full gigabit speed out of a router will need one of the very newest models.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/bar/179-wan-to-lan-tcp/35

And note this very carefully.. it must use hardware NAT.. that is a special function of the chipset which speeds up NAT routing. The problem is most routers are used with functionality.. like firewall or QoS or any form of packet testing.. as soon as you use extra functionality which is only available via the firmware.. hardware NAT is turned off the speed drops to about half of the tested speed.. read carefully how they test.

To get a true gigabit fully functional wireless router, you will do better with a PC variety that runs pfsense for example and will need a 3ghz processor.. not hard with any low end pentium or i3.

You need to do a check of speeds from your internal network.. and then to your external connection.

Degradation in speed is not that uncommon but tracking the exact reason for it is not simple.

So what I would recommend is firstly to carefully test wireless speeds from your laptop to another computer in your local network connected by ethernet to the AE and with it's wireless off.. to eliminate a double wireless hop.

The correct tool is called iperf and was included in command line on older OS.. you will need to check for it in your current OS.. but there are other tools as well which you might find easier to run.

Let me check what other network tools are available. But you might already have something suitable to produce the long term speed test you have done which is really neat.. btw.

You use this in combo with the wireless diagnostics on your computer to make sure your TC is transmitting signal at the best frequency and full 80mhz of bandwidth.

Once you establish the best possible speed in local network then you will have a much better idea of what is going wrong.

Wireless connections are based on signal strength NOT speed.. so in my network to get wireless working to peak efficiency I have to make sure I get a link speed of 1300Mbps.. not two stream 867Mbps.. it is easy to lose speed from even a single wall blocking signal.. AC wireless in 5ghz declines rapidly with distance.

Hold down the option key when you click the wireless fan in the top menu will also give you a quick view of the connection.

This is very close to the Apple TC.. as you can see from signal at -34dBm.. ie very high.

It is on full 80mhz and yet right now I can only get 878Mbps link speed.. it should be 1300 or close to it.

You can also get link speed from the TC.. remember this is two way.

Speed can vary at both ends.

So in the airport utility click the icon of the AE.. and then roll the mouse pointer over the link.. an extra menu item will pop up that shows the connection.

So data rate at the TC (same as your AE).. is 1053Mbps.. which is very good but still not peak.

You can then do a simple test like copying a file to client.. it should be something that has a proper SSD that will not be limited by disk speed.

If I do a speed test by copying a single very large file to/from a fast NAS, I get the following.

The peak there is 80MByte/s so that is 640Mbps.. when you consider the overheads in wireless connection.. that is really good.. it does take a while to ramp up the speed which is also typical so the overall transfer speed is a lot less than its peak.

Run those sort of tests and you will quickly build up a picture of where the choke point is in your setup.

As LaPastenague notes.....as a router, the AirPort Time Capsule usually checks in at a maximum of about 350-400 Mbps on download speed checks.

But, when the Time Capsule is set up to operate in Bridge Mode, the device can produce much higher speeds, since the Time Capsule is not handling routing duties.

Is is possible that you first had the Time Capsule set up in Bridge Mode, and the device was later changed to operate in router mode? That would explain the download speed differences that you are reporting.

sp_64 wrote:

I have a very similar issue, but don't have gigabit. With ethernet, my download speed is ~240Mbps, but wireless is 49-60Mbps!! 😠 My ISP modem is set to bridge mode and my TimeCapsule is set to Create a new wireless network.

Check your link speed on the computer.. I think you are probably connected to 2.4ghz.. due to signal strength 2.4ghz will generally have precedence over 5ghz.. but to get max speed you must use 5ghz. It is really a different problem.

I have a very similar issue, but don't have gigabit. With ethernet, my download speed is ~240Mbps, but wireless is 49-60Mbps!! 😠 My ISP modem is set to bridge mode and my TimeCapsule is set to Create a new wireless network.

MyCloud are known to be slow.. but whenever you see 10MB/s speed suspect you are actually connected at 100Mbit.. instead of Gigabit..

or by the old cable.

Replace this cable with new Cat5e or Cat6.

Or just plug the laptop directly into the mycloud by ethernet.. you will need to set an IP manually and then test file transfer speed.. but you should get 40MB/s or so.. WD MyCloud is seriously underpowered on the processor and as I showed, I can get 80MB/s peak speed to the Synology plugged into network via the airport.

Or I have to get those monster router from Asus, Netgear?

If you want high speed download from your fibre.. buy one of the monsters..

Mesh network gear solves a problem.. but it is never going to get wire speed.. in fact the more hops you put into wireless the poorer it performs.

And remember even the fastest wireless is never going to get speed in real world of gigabit.

You might link at 1000 or 1300Mbps but the actual transfer speed is never more than half.. that means AC wireless will achieve 600Mbps on a really good day.. sitting on top of the equipment.. normally 400Mbps is more like a Max. Wireless is half-duplex.. ie it can only transmit or receive.. not both simultaneously.. gigabit ethernet and Tx and Rx at the same time.. wireless can only talk to one client at a time.. ie it time slices.. gigabit ethernet is able to handle multiple computers at the same time.. until you bottleneck the gigabit at least.

Wireless becomes more and more inefficient as you increase the number of clients.. due to needing to pause to allow clients to tx and uses inefficient collision methods.

I use one of those Monster.. Asus RT-AC3200. But as soon as you use some of the functionality.. which is extremely useful like QoS.. it then needs to inspect every packet for destination.. and you will wind back its speed. Normally about the same as the AE.. which has no hardware NAT.

I run QoS.. which is great.. but I could run one of the VPN server or clients.. or Firewall etc.. any of those things costs processor time.. which reduces the overall speed of WAN to LAN throughput.