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Airport Extreme Speed Issues

jaw04005

jaw04005

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 19, 2003
4,513
402
AR
I just purchased an Airport Extreme base station to use with my Airport Express. Well, I hooked the base station up to my Motorola cable modem and followed Apple's directions for setup.

The base station is throttling down my modem. When my iMac is directly connected to the base station (with the station's wireless turned off), it receives an average speed rate of 300k and sometimes that can get as low as 96k according several "speed testing" sites. It also feels really slow when downloading or watching streaming video.

If I unplug the modem from the base station, and plug it directly into my iMac. My speed jumps up to around 700k-1300k and downloading or streaming content is much faster!

I know speed tests can vary (especially CNETs), but I tried about 5 different sites, on average of 15 times each test. Whats going on? I have called AppleCare, and they didn't have any suggestions---they recommended replacing my cable modem or ethernet cable.

I doubt thats the rememdy. Anyone got any suggestions! I would just take the base station back, but Apple limits MacMall's exchange policies and forces the customer to deal directly with Apple (at least that is what my "Account Executive" at MacMall told me). Heh.
 
J

jabex

macrumors newbie
Sep 26, 2004
3
0
New York
joshuawaire said:
...The base station is throttling down my modem...
Click to expand...

The base station wouldn't have any impact on your internet connection speed though.

I would imagine that either...
a) someone else is on your network using your connection, thus slowing things down so you don't get the speeds you're used to.
b) there were apps using the internet on your iMac when it was connected with the base station, slowing down your available connection speed while you were running the tests.
c) it's just a fluke - cable connections don't offer a guaranteed connection speed in the same way that DSL does.

Is your wireless network secure at all? If not, I suggest "closing" your network (making it invisible), using MAC Address Filtering, and/or WEP to make sure you're the only one using your internet connection. All this can be done with the "Airport Admin Utility" in the Utilities folder.

Also remember, that when you run a speed test, if anything is using your internet connection (say, you're watching trailers on Apple's site or grabbing a game demo or something), that will have an effect on your speed test results.

Hope that helps.
 
Kingsnapped

Kingsnapped

macrumors 6502a
Oct 16, 2003
929
3
Los Angeles, CA
Mine did that too, and I'm out where nobody is pirating my signal. The internet would get unusable with Airport, as would local Rendezvous messaging. When I plugged right into the modem, I went nice and fast.

Call up Apple. Unless you are overlooking something stupid, it's a hardware issue and you'll get a fresh one.
 
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