Is my Airport dying?

Sad Professor

I'm on UPC 25Mps, except I never get more than 15Mps - and that's with my Mac up on top of the router. I was blaming UPC for this, but today I went and hooked my MBP directly to the modem using Ethernet and was immediately getting full speeds.

My router is a very old Airport Extreme Base Station. At least 7 years old. It's 8.011b/g only, no N. Tbh I've been having a lot of problems with it lately, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's dying. But I also have a somewhat younger Airport Express (again, b/g, no N), which was sitting unused in a box until recently. I replaced the Extreme with it to see if there was any improvement. Speeds are actually worse - 10/12Mps at most.

So, do I have two very old and dying Airport Base Stations, or could there be something else wrong? I don't want to fork out for a new Express and find out the problem is elsewhere, so I'd welcome any ideas.

The Big Gig

you hardly ever get same speed over wifi as you do ethernet. I'm on 100meg UPC and it max out at 70Meg (even with wireless N) over wifi but 104 over ethernet. I wouldn't say your airports a goosed.

Sad Professor

Yeah, I was asking a friend about this earlier and he said that there's so much overhead and interference on 8011.2g that 10-20Mps is normal. I expected it to be able to handle 20-25Mps at least. Most of the time it struggles to give me 10-12Mps. I dunno, maybe he's right. Either way, I guess I need a new N router.

conor.hogan.2

25Mb UPC getting 18-20 with the router they give you, over WIFI obviously.

It changes regularly over the day. Also worth noting that the 25 is the max speed you can get not your average or expected speed.

Sad Professor

Is it an N router?

conor.hogan.2

Sad Professor wrote: »

Is it an N router?

I should know but I do not. G I would guess. It is according to googling the model no.

conor.hogan.2

Mr.S wrote: »

Never seen it dip below 20mb.

I wonder why mine dips up and down so much then as that would have nothing to do with my router.

Sad Professor

Well my speed goes up and down as well and is still no where near what I get with it connected via Ethernet. It may just be down to varying levels of interference on the 2.4 GHz band.

I think I'll get another Airport. An Express will do me. I loathe wireless routers with a passion. I have a box full of them from various ISPs over the years sitting in the attic. At least with a new Airport I can just restore my existing settings onto it.

conor.hogan.2

Just curious why are you going for another Airport over any other "normal" router*?

The varying speeds is mostly down to UPC imo, I have gotten faster streaming speed over free bad VPNs at times than over UPC so I am certain they shape traffic at times.

Sad Professor

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Just curious why are you going for another Airport over any other "normal" router*?

Like I said, because I hate them. I've never had a good experience with any other wireless router. Neither the ones that I received from ISPs nor the ones that I've had to set up for family members. The are confusing, they are unreliable, they have stupid firewall features and the manufacturer won't fix them. At least I know how Airports work and I can just transfer my existing settings and network without having to do anything. I can literally take it out of the box, plug it in, open Airport Utility and that's it.

However, I'd welcome any recommendations for a cheaper, superior Airport alternative that will be worth the pain of having to set up everything again.

conor.hogan.2

Fair enough, when it comes to this sort of thing I generally stick with the default as it gives me no trouble and suits my needs.

I know it is far from the best, in any way.

brav

From my experience 12 to 15 is normal for G wifi networks

conor.hogan.2

Yeah, I must buy a better router otherwise it is a waste on 25Mb.

Sad Professor

Well, like I said, I am open to alternatives. However, I am more familiar with Airport and how they work, which is obviously a factor. I've always found other routers a pain in the arse to set up. But I was looking at few in PC World today and they looked quite decent - and cheaper - so I may consider it.

The UPC router that was supplied with my modem was a Netgear G router, which won't solve my speed issues. And everything I've heard about UPC's current routers is bad, so I'm not going there.

One thing that would definitely push me toward a different router is if I could connect a hard drive to it and share it on the network, similar to AirDisk. But only if I could do it without having to install any third party software. Anyone have any experience with this? The ones I was looking at today seemed to require that you install software.

The Big Gig

I presume your modem is just that.... A modem? And you are using your AE as a router?
My old man was doing something similar last week but upgraded to 50meg and got the newer Cisco router and is pretty good. I know have a spare airport extreme!!
Anyway. I have 100mb at home and have the Thompson router. I eventually managed to he it working in bridge mode an plugged a time capsule in to it to act as my router. All worked fine except I was experiencing maybe a 10% speed drop in comparison to the Thompson.
If have a look at upgrading to 50 if I were you. If you go for phone line too it can actually be cheaper than 25. I have the phone line too but have never actually plugged it in!!

Sad Professor

Yeah, it's just a modem. As I said, the supplied router was a Netgear that I only used briefly. I can't remember why I stopped using it. I think I had speed/reliability issues with it.

I really don't need 50Mb and I already have the phone line. I might inquire anyway and see how much UPC want for a new router. But isn't the Cisco is a combined router/modem? Because I really don't want that.

Looking at routers and tbh most of the decent ones aren't much cheaper than an Airport. I could get some piece of crap Belkin, but it would probably fail after a year like everything they make.

conor.hogan.2

Why don't you want a modem/router?

Increasing from 25 to 50 is only 5 euro extra a month afair. (check it up though, I am not sure at all)

Sad Professor

Having a separate modem is a lot easier if you want to use a different router. I had a combined router/modem when I was with Smart and it was a pain in the arse. If I wanted to forward a port I had to do it on both of them. And if the internet stopped working it was much harder to rule out a router problem since I had two of them.

Increasing to 50Mb isn't an option. I'd drop to a lower package if I could.

Elvis_Presley

You can get a phone app (free) which scans all the wifi channels and tells you which ones are least busy. If you live in an area with lost of wifi networks you could be getting interference, so changing channel might make a big diference.

The Big Gig

Refurb store sometimes have airport extremes on it. Extreme has a USB to hook up a network drive.

Sad Professor

Yeah, I'm considering a refurb Extreme. I can get a previous gen model for 117 delivered. I really need a dual-band router anyway, otherwise the network is going to slow down to 8011.2g speeds anytime a G-only device is using the network.

Deep Thought

Hi

I have Airport Extreme and was having the same problem, I plugged MBP direct and got 20MB speeds

Then I remembered that I changed the default DNS to googles DNS

I changed them back to default and I began to get about 19MB

Just a thought

Sad Professor

A slow DNS server would have no impact on a speed test. DNS is just used to get the IP address of a website.

Sad Professor

Is WEP significantly less secure than WPA? I downgraded the firmware on my AEBS to fix the stability problems I was having, but it seems one of the things the firmware update fixed was the AEBS's dodgy WPA implementation which prevents my Xbox, WDTV, etc from being able to connect to it. So I've now had to switch to WEP.

Colonel Panic

WEP is basically trivial to crack if someone decides they want to do it. Whether they will or not is a different story.

Just get a new router already! I keep my Airport Express for Airtunes in the kitchen as a client, I like it too much despite it being pretty useless.

Sad Professor

I picked up one of the new dual-band Express stations earlier. UPC has been down for hours, so I haven't been able to test it until now. Just did a speed test and getting 31.5Mbps.