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Airport Extreme suddenly slow even on Ethernet port

G

greg555

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 24, 2005
644
8
Canada
My refurbished 5th gen Airport Extreme has been working great for over a year. Now suddenly it is slow, over WiFi and on the iMac that is connected to it via Ethernet.

If I connect the iMac directly to the cable modem I get 20 to 30Mbps on speedtest.net. When connected through the Extreme I get about 1Mbps usually and sometimes up to 3Mbps. I used to get at least 10 to 15Mbps. If I disable the wireless on the Extreme I get good speeds on the iMac. As soon as I turn the wireless feature back on my speeds (through the Ethernet) slow down again.

This thread (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4307591?start=0&tstart=0) suggested that interference on the WiFi channels can slow down the Ethernet and that's what the above results seem to imply.

I've tried manually changing to a few other channels with no improvements. Is there any method to tell which channels might work better? Is there something else I should try? (The DHCP Clients list doesn't show any unexpected devices so I don't think anyone is stealing my WiFi.) Or could it be a subtle hardware failure?

Thanks - Greg
 
greg555 said:
I've tried manually changing to a few other channels with no improvements. Is there any method to tell which channels might work better? Is there something else I should try? (The DHCP Clients list doesn't show any unexpected devices so I don't think anyone is stealing my WiFi.) Or could it be a subtle hardware failure?
Click to expand...

Try doing a full factory reset. Also, verify that the AirPort is running in DHCP & NAT mode as sometimes when bridged to another router there are speed issues.
 
Altemose said:
Try doing a full factory reset. Also, verify that the AirPort is running in DHCP & NAT mode as sometimes when bridged to another router there are speed issues.
Click to expand...

The DHCP tab says Beginning Address is 10.0.1.2 and Ending Address 10.0.1.200, and DHCP Lease 1 day. The NAT tab has the "Enable NAT Port Mapping Protocol" checked but doesn't have "Enable default host at" box checked.

Is there anything I need to change there?

Thanks.
 
greg555 said:
The DHCP tab says Beginning Address is 10.0.1.2 and Ending Address 10.0.1.200, and DHCP Lease 1 day. The NAT tab has the "Enable NAT Port Mapping Protocol" checked but doesn't have "Enable default host at" box checked.

Is there anything I need to change there?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

No. That is the correct settings. I recommend doing a full reset and re-configure from scratch though.
 
I did do the reset and re-configure without any luck. I did notice that when I changed the SSID I could have the wireless on without affecting the Ethernet speed so I started to suspect one of the devices on my network was eating up the bandwidth.

I downloaded SNMP Status 0.5 and with its help eventually narrowed it down to my daughter's new Xbox. It was using at ton of data while sitting there doing nothing. I pulled the power cord and everything is back to normal.

In hindsight I should have suspected something like this unfortunately the AirPort Extreme does give you any traffic monitoring abilities. Now I just have to figure out what's the problem with the Xbox.


Thanks for all your help.
 
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