Airport Express is cutting a 60mbps connection down to under 20mbps

[Whackintosh]

Hoping that someone can help me with this. I recently purchased an airport express (most recent version) to use as a wi-fi bridge as my connection doesn't reach the basement area of my home. I'm using a 2013 Airport Extreme as my main router and I've got a 60mbps connection. Connecting my airport express, the speeds drop to just under 20mbps, even if I'm standing three feet in front of the unit. Does anyone know what I can do to fix this?

 

[Intell]

Can you give us a layout of your general network?

 

[Whackintosh]

Can you give us a layout of your general network?

Sure. What info do you need?

 

[Intell]

How the Express is connected to the Extreme, the Internet speed, what is connected to the Express and how.

 

[Whackintosh]

Ah. The Express is connected to the Extreme via wi-fi, the Extreme is connected to my cable modem via ethernet cable. Airport Utility indicates that the Express connection is "excellent".

Other devices connected to the Express are an Apple TV 2, a iPhone 6 and a 2013 rmbp.

Ookla is telling me that I get speeds of 62.69 from the Extreme and 24.43 from the Express (moving the Express around in the past hour has gotten me slightly faster speeds).

 

[Intell]

The Express has limited speeds over WiFi when compared to the Extreme. You may be maxing out its wireless speeds.

 

[Whackintosh]

The Express has limited speeds over WiFi when compared to the Extreme. You may be maxing out its wireless speeds.

Shoot, I hadn't realized that. I'd assumed the Express could handle whatever modern speeds were thrown at it. In that case, I would have been better off getting a second Extreme for a bridge, I suppose.

 

[orestes1984]

Shoot, I hadn't realized that. I'd assumed the Express could handle whatever modern speeds were thrown at it. In that case, I would have been better off getting a second Extreme for a bridge, I suppose.

If its still within the 14 days grace period you can take it back and exchange it for an Airport Extreme.

 

[Altemose]

Shoot, I hadn't realized that. I'd assumed the Express could handle whatever modern speeds were thrown at it. In that case, I would have been better off getting a second Extreme for a bridge, I suppose.

Your best bet would be to run an Ethernet drop from the Extreme to the Express. Even then you are limited to 100 Mbps based off the 100 Mbps WAN port.

 

[Whackintosh]

Your best bet would be to run an Ethernet drop from the Extreme to the Express. Even then you are limited to 100 Mbps based off the 100 Mbps WAN port.

Is that likely to make a significant difference?

 

[ElectronGuru]

You're running the express as a repeater. It reads in the data, then spits it back out then reads it back it in. That alone will cut your total bandwidth. Giving both and Ethernet port will cut traffic and interference and boost throughput.

 

[Altemose]

Is that likely to make a significant difference?

Well... I would begin by looking at the transmit rate between the Express and the Extreme. This is verifiable in the AirPort Utility. Divide that in half because you are having it run as a repeater and take off a bit for overhead and you have the highest speed you will see. You can try a factory reset, but it is likely that it just has a slow transmit rate and as a result shows the speed decrease you see. Wiring it in via Ethernet would eliminate this problem and still work as an AP rather than repeater.