AirMac Extreme Base slow speed

[ddiMac]

Hello everyone

I have just got an AirMac Extreme, and wanted to use it as a router and share internet between 1 Mac and 1 Pc. Now everything works but...

Before I was connected directly to the fiber_Optic cable modem and via PPoE accessing the internet. the speed tested on the provider speed/test page was 180 Mbps (I should have 200mega connection but I guess it gets lost on the way) Now My provider gives only one port on the modem so was told that to add another pc needed a router and being a mac user I ended in buying the AirMac. Once all the cable were in place and with only the Mac running and the wifi set to Off I tested again (over and over) the speed and it goes around 120Mbps. Now retested the other configuration again and I was back to 180.

I know that 120 are more than what average people have home, but still less then what is expected/delivered and it seems a Mac issue. Is there any problem or any things I am missing in the configuration? Do you guys know of why its limited in speed? Shouldn't it have a gigabit ethernet? (Using updated firmware 7.4.2)

Thanks for any help

 

[geoffreak]

First of all, where do you live and how much do you pay for internet? I'll be moving there soon

There is a difference between theoretical and actual speeds of networks. Although a network may all be "gigabit", the actual speed will vary depending on the hardware used in the network.

An Airport (not AirMac) Extreme is a consumer router. It has gigabit Ethernet, so you may get the high speeds for a brief time, but don't count on having the speeds maintained for any duration of time.

You will need a more powerful router to handle the high speeds of fiber optic internet. Linksys has some very powerful wired routers that should be able to handle the speeds required without high costs.

If you really want power, you will need a Mac Pro or Xserve to use as a router. One of those will absolutely allow you to have gigabit network speeds assuming everything is wired directly to it.

Regardless of which router you end up buying, you can use your AEBS as a wireless access point as the wireless is pretty fast for a router. Having only the wireless network traffic go through it will also decrease the workload on it and the central router.

 

[ddiMac]

First of all, where do you live and how much do you pay for internet? I'll be moving there soon

Thanks for the replay,
I live in Japan and the company that provides the service is eoHikari http://hikari.kwn.ne.jp/eo/ the have 3 plans: 100mega 200mega and 1 giga and are montly flat priced as follow 4900yen (usd51), 5400 (usd56), and 8700yen (usd91).

I am not using the wireless feature even though I might use it in the future just disappointed that using the same hardware and cable get different (lower speed) if I pass through that nice expensive white box. Above all having the speed and bandwidth and not using it is a waste I think. The AEBS is advertised as having a gigabyte ethernet port and that is what mislead me. Maybe I should inquire with the Apple itself

 

[geoffreak]

Again, you need an enterprise class router in order to achieve the speeds of your internet on your local network. Over here in the US, internet speeds are much slower, with about 5mb/s the most common. Consumer routers don't need to cope with the fast speeds offered by Japanese internet over here.

 

[deceiver]

1) Airport is called AirMac in japan cause of some trademark issue (read in wikipedia)

2) Even though the airport extreme base is a consumer router it should still achieve more than 120mbit. Since it has a 1gigabit lan chip is should at least get more than 20% faster speeds over a 100mbit lan connection. The airport extreme base station is not exactly cheap either... Marketing for the win again!

 

[geoffreak]

1) My bad, I didn't know that

2) You can pay as much as you want for something, but it doesn't mean that it is going to work.

 

[ddiMac]

1) Airport is called AirMac in japan cause of some trademark issue (read in wikipedia)

2) Even though the airport extreme base is a consumer router it should still achieve more than 120mbit. Since it has a 1gigabit lan chip is should at least get more than 20% faster speeds over a 100mbit lan connection. The airport extreme base station is not exactly cheap either... Marketing for the win again!

Yes I have spent the morning with apple support and it seems that that is the maximum you can get from that expensive white box. They basically told me that if I get 180mbps from the modem is normal to get 120mbps with the Apple box. Well I am still mad at them because they are misleading consumers on the real outputs of it. BAD on them! And it is not that it is slow per se I Just wanted it to be clear on the box. Say like max internet output 120-130mbps ... and not Gigabit ethernet port and bla bla bla.

Thank you guys

 

[geoffreak]

Again, actual vs theoretical.
At least it is faster than 100mb/s

 

[deceiver]

hmmm maybe the 60mbit are lost in overhead lol. I'm going to test later to send some data from pc -> airport -> macbook over the gigabit lan and see what speeds I can get.

 

[munkees]

hmmm maybe the 60mbit are lost in overhead lol. I'm going to test later to send some data from pc -> airport -> macbook over the gigabit lan and see what speeds I can get.

I used to write this kind of software, for transferring data between ports, writing ethernet driver, etc etc.

My experience, is moving data from the WAN to the LAN maybe using 2 different interfaces on the processor, and because it runs though services like converting IP addresses, the ISP gives you one, sometimes more, most people have a private DHCP network on the backend, it has to strip every packet and replace the ip address, this add overhead, if NAT is switched on, then there is another layer to do. BTW there are fast bit swapping methods to doing IP swap. I would like to say it the routing between the WAN and the LAN is were the problem will be. Also might find that the CPU is maxing out hence the 120MB cap.

Test LAN to LAN on gigabit ethernet might not show this problem, seeing switching on the same interface and not passing the packets up like the WAN interface.

It might seem misleading having a gigabit interface, and not being able to handle the internet traffic. But to my guess having ethernet gigabit for LAN, the WAN came as part of the package.

I don't know what OS apple is using on the Airport extreme, hopefully not vxWorks from windriver, if it is there is the problem, the OS does not scale well, and the method they recommend to handling interfaces is very inefficient, on one produce I worked, used their recommend way, I by passed, managed to move 100Mb though our device from 34MB, around 100 our CPU would max out.

also tasting though put will require special test equipment to generate large amounts of traffic and to capture it on the another interface. passing a large file will not prove much.

 

[deceiver]

I wrote a test app some time ago to flood tcpip over lan to check the limits for a project but I have to compile it first under osx then could test whats the max I can get in the same interface. Sadly if I had a gigabit router I could connect it to the wan port and see what happens there -when the airport is in bridge mode that is.

Nevertheless I want a 180mbit connection at home too... please?

 

[munkees]

I wrote a test app some time ago to flood tcpip over lan to check the limits for a project but I have to compile it first under osx then could test whats the max I can get in the same interface. Sadly if I had a gigabit router I could connect it to the wan port and see what happens there -when the airport is in bridge mode that is.

Nevertheless I want a 180mbit connection at home too... please?

me too, I would love 180 Mbit

I don't think the Apple Extreme is designed for high speed, don't think it was on Apples mind. @ 100mb and up, I would not look at an apple extreme, I would look to cisco.

 

[ddiMac]

I think you guys are right, but just tell it to customers what to expect and we will be happy while if you make me pay a lot letting me believe something else then it is not the apple I used to love. But as soon as I get back the second pc I will try to ping it over the network and see what I get

 

[Xirian]

I know this doesn't help you, but does your mac have 802.11n? if so, could you tell me what speed you get from a web speed test over it?

 

[ddiMac]

I know this doesn't help you, but does your mac have 802.11n? if so, could you tell me what speed you get from a web speed test over it?

Nope sorry don't have wireless cards I went straight to cables due to speed reasons, and since we don't have laptops I set wireless to be off. I got this AEBS because was thinking to get an iphone in the near future and was hoping it to be fast enough.

 

[ddiMac]

hmmm maybe the 60mbit are lost in overhead lol. I'm going to test later to send some data from pc -> airport -> macbook over the gigabit lan and see what speeds I can get.

what speed did you get? and how do you test it, got back the other machine and I would like to test it as well