Wirelessly Extending Network Did NOT Cut My Speed

[b-rad g]

So ever since getting an Airport Express to join with my Time Capsule for Airplay, I was under the impression that wirelessly extending your network would cut your speed in half since it has to use the network to also extend it.

Well in an effort to try something with my MagicJack I allowed the network to be extended on the Time Capsule and extended the network on the Express. Well, my plan didn't work for the MagicJack. But before I set the Express back to just joining the network for Airplay, I decided to see what the speeds were to my iPhone, Mac Mini and MacBook Air while it was extended.

Lo and behold I'm getting my max speed that I was always getting from my ISP. I pay for the basic level for Fiber-To-The-Home which is 5mbps. On all of my devices I am getting almost 6mbps (Mini was 5.72 up/5.69 down). Why is this? Is it because I am not getting a 15mbps or higher coming to the TC? I don't think there's been a firmware update for either the TC or the AE.

Can someone else do some tests with theirs and see what they get??

 

[ilkhan4]

Extending your network should have little to no impact on your internet upload or download speeds. You may see some slightly higher latency, but not enough to be noticeable. Your wireless network is about an order of magnitude faster than your internet connection so even if you did slow down the wireless part, it's stay way more than fast enough for the internet part.

 

[b-rad g]

Extending your network should have little to no impact on your internet upload or download speeds. You may see some slightly higher latency, but not enough to be noticeable. Your wireless network is about an order of magnitude faster than your internet connection so even if you did slow down the wireless part, it's stay way more than fast enough for the internet part.

So you're saying that if I were getting a much higher speed from my ISP, for instance if I went to the 30mbps plan, that I would then see the reduction in speed?

 

[mmomega]

If I sit in my Office and pull the signal from the Base Station I can get 35+Mbp/s over WiFi but if I sit in my living room and am connected to the Express I have yet to go over 18Mbp/s.

This is with the Express wirelessly extending the network.

 

[brentsg]

So you're saying that if I were getting a much higher speed from my ISP, for instance if I went to the 30mbps plan, that I would then see the reduction in speed?

Wirelessly extending your network will cut bandwidth in half locally. You will need a pretty fast ISP to notice, yes.

Generally people are more concerned with the impact on locally moving files or streaming video.

 

[fat jez]

I extended my network on the 2GHz band and use the 5GHz band to connect my MBP and iPad 2 wirelessly, so I can still get up to the full 450Mbps under ideal conditions.