Poor 2.4GHz speed on Airport Extreme

Thanks Bob..

reset Airport Express as the base station, and reran some of the tests

Failures give good information.. it means the problem is broader than a single router.

While the test results never got speeds above 28mbps down on the express the spread of results.. is totally amazing.. from 1.26mbps as lowest reading.. with almost no consistency.

Let me get you to do what I suggested above..

First one is to downgrade the firmware. 7.7.9 is causing issues for some people. Slow wireless is one of them.

If this problem started at the time when that firmware came out .. that could well be the cause.

I personally have not experienced this.. but the forum is filled with people who have.. so this one is well worth a go.

I want you to do this in such a way that you test just the one or two items.

If you have not done so please put the Airport Extreme back into the network.. and for this you should leave the express off.

1. Save the current configuration on your Extreme.

With the configuration open click on File on the top menu and Export Configuration File. This will enable you to quickly restore the setup. Just import the configuration file.

2. Downgrade the firmware.

Select the current firmware with the option key held down.

Simply click on 7.7.8 and allow it to run.. the firmware will go back one step.

3. I want you to factory reset the Extreme.. either with the reset button or using the airport utility.

Restore Default Settings.

4. Reconfigure the Extreme when it starts up after a couple of min..

Call it something simple like AEgen6 and use AEgen6 as wireless name.. I want only a couple of clients to connect.

If you have problems with selecting the 2.4ghz then simply change the wireless name to AEgen624 on the main wireless screen.. ie

And use different number on Wireless Options for 5ghz.

5. Once you complete save and then update the configuration of the AE.

Test again how the 2.4ghz works.. if this fails.. again.. I might have reached the end of my current suggestions.

If it does work.. and 2.4ghz now goes back to reasonable speed.. then the firmware upgrade was the problem as many others (but not everyone) has experienced.

You can then restore the configuration.. the firmware will stay the same.. but you will then get your old setup and you can test again with all the clients connected.

6. You can downgrade the Express using the same method.. should not need to reconfigure.

However, this was not a problem when I first had the speed upgrade, and the performance is way more variable than I would expect.

So you were able to connect and download at 150mbps over 2.4ghz?

I am going to upset you.. but that is actually not possible.

A bit of theory. Apple restrict 2.4ghz in all their routers to using only 20mhz. This gives an absolute max link speed on N wireless adapter of 150mbps.. and on AC card of 217mbps.

From that link speed your actual throughput can never exceed half.. so the absolute best speed on 2.4ghz real world is around 75mbps..N wireless and say 108mbps on AC card.

A speed that worked great with your older service conditions BTW.

Now as devices multiply and you have several devices on 2.4ghz they each must get a slice of the time.. (wireless cannot share simultaneously with multiple devices..) so that will limit speed a bit more.. as you say.. not a lot but it makes wireless less efficient. Those speeds given above are a max across all clients.. and any client actually using the internet at all is going to subtract from the total any other device can get.

What you need to do to make sure things are working as well as possible.. is to actually put numbers to the problem.

What model is your Airport Extreme (AE)?

How old is it?

So this is much easier to do on a Mac laptop computer.

Make sure you are connected to the 2.4ghz band.

Hold down the option key while you click the wireless icon..

Ignore the strange name.. this is a Gen5 Time Capsule.. sitting literally 6" from my computer.

It has AC wireless card and has linked at full speed possible.. ie 217Mbps.

You can also see the RSSI (signal level) is -59dBm and noise of -78dBm.. these are very poor numbers.. at that range I should be getting signal of -30dBm and noise should be less than -85dB. So as you move away from the TC the signal is going to fall off rapidly.

Now in the screenshot I have shown.. you can also see wireless diagnostics. Click on that.. but don't open the main screen.. the automatic diagnostic report will do nothing useful for you.. go straight to the scan.

So ignore this..

Open scan.

And then do a Scan Now..

Open out the boundaries and you will be able to see all the surrounding wifi and signal levels.

I suggest you do a scan firstly next to the AE.. then go to the location of your Apple TV for example and do the scan again.. see how much the signal has dropped.

There is one more useful source of actual numbers.. that is the AE in the airport utility.

Hover your mouse pointer over each wireless client in the summary page and a second window will open giving some useful stats.

This is actually really helpful.. it is showing the RSSI of -27dBm.. much closer to what I consider suitable for really close up connection.. and data rate also sitting at max.. again not surprising. So the output of the TC has now dropped well below the wireless card in the computer. This is what we see as Airports get older their output drops.

If you can post those screenshots for us we can help you interpret them.. and see where issues might be..

For example the problem can be interference.. since 2.4ghz is overused in urban areas nowadays.. high noise figures will show that surrounding wifi networks as well as other devices.. e.g... cordless phones, door bells, baby monitors, av senders, which all operate on 2.4ghz are harming your signal reception.

An actual speedtest in the two locations will be great help as well.

Once we get actual numbers we can figure out (maybe) how to improve it.

Thanks for doing all those tests.. and the results are very clear.

There is definitely something wrong with your 2.4ghz. But I am thinking it is router not the wireless itself.

None of your stats look incorrect.. it is simply not working to the speed you should get.

What modem do you have?

How long have you had it?

How old is the Extreme?

There is definitely an issue with most of the single port Arris modems. So if you happen to have one of those.. or similar unit we might be seeing a really odd routing issue here.

Can I get you to run a test for me.

Take the Express and use it in place of the Airport Extreme.

You will need to turn off the Extreme and unplug it.. no need to change its settings.

But you will need to reset the Express and set it in router mode.. and plug into the main modem.. and then test the 2.4ghz. The test is very short.. a couple of min.. then you can reset the Express back to Extend wireless once you put the airport extreme back into place.

OR

Get hold of another router.. if you have one or friend has one who is willing to loan to you.

Once we determine if the Extreme is actually faulty in some way..

There is a few things you can do..

First one is to downgrade the firmware. 7.7.9 is causing issues for some people. Slow wireless is one of them.

If this problem started at the time when that firmware came out .. that could well be the cause.

It is difficult to test speed internally unless you have two computers in the network.. if you do have two laptops for example.. plug one directly to the airport by ethernet.. wireless off. And connect the other one by 2.4ghz. Then just copy a file between them.. that will do for our test here. It should copy at miserably slow speed.. you can use the activity monitor to watch the actual network speed.

(There is better software available to do this test.. which you can try if you like).

Edit

Sorry it is early morning here and my brain is up to only first cup of coffee for the day.

The post is a bit of mess. Answer each of the easy questions.. and we can figure out the path forward.

It is particularly what model is your modem that interests me at this point.

not sure that this improved anything ... certainly not on the speed tests.

On your page 9 the speed tests are much improved at 2.4ghz. Still a bit inconsistent but a lot better than previously. If you compare that to your previous results.. I think you can see your current better speeds. And remember on a phone that only links at 130Mbps anyway.. a speed of 75Mbps download is absolute max it can achieve.. which goes right back to my first point.. you cannot download at 150Mbit on a phone on 2.4ghz.. because you can never get more than half the speed.. that is why you need to use 5ghz.

It might also be time to do actual download speeds from FTP source on the network. I see your test inconsistency is sometimes due to picking a variety of different servers. When you run speed tests you need to remove the ISP component as much as possible.. so the best source of files to download is your own ISP cache of files like firmware updates held in a server as close to you as possible. Or check out other test sites that are actually downloading a 100MB file or something of that size.

Also notice your variation on 5ghz.. one test result is half the speed of the others.. but when you have 90Mbps getting 45 is OK.. when you start at 48 then 17 seems a bit low.. but I think it is showing that ISP speed consistency at least on the ookla tests are now showing ISP variation.

Are you doing all the speed tests on your phone? Could you also do some tests from the Mac if that is the case. The Mac has hugely better wireless card than any of the phones do.

- you don't comment on the modem - should this one be able to cope OK ?

We get some strange issues mainly with Arris modems..

The Cisco/Linksys modem is not usually one I see here often as having issues. Also the speed is good via the 5ghz and ethernet connections so I it appears to be pretty strictly limited to 2.4ghz.. and now we have seen that it is across both Extreme and the very different Express.. I am more convinced the problem is firmware related.

All of us experience the occasional disappearing post. which is a real curse when you put a lot of effort into it.. and since there is only about 10min edit time if you rush to post it then you get it half finished.. but it will appear as soon as you post.

Sorry you will need to do it all over again.

FYI - Please excuse my interfering here. I follow one of your corresponders as I find his posts informative to my situation. I have learned the hard way to create my post first in a Pages document. Then when I am ready to post it to the support communities, I have a copy that I can use in case my post gets lost. I hope you find this useful. Good Luck!

The Airport Express is running v 7.6.9 (as opposed to 7.7.9 on the Extreme)

The AirPort Express is an "n" wireless device. 7.6.9 is the most recent firmware for "n" devices.

The AirPort Extreme is an "ac" wireless device. 7.7.9 is the most recent firmware for "ac" devices.

Or, stated another way......you can't install 7.7.9 on an AirPort Express.