AirPort Extreme Multicast Rate limitation

I am currently using an iMac G5 which has an AirPort Extreme card with firmware 405.1. I have an AirPort Extreme (802.11n) base station that is running firmware version 7.1.1. My Radio Mode is "802.11n (802.11b/g compatible)." My wireless security is WPA/WPA2 personal.
When I go into my Wireless Options, my Country is United States, my Transmit power is 100% and my WPA Group Key Timeout is one day. It is not a closed network and I do not use interference robustness.
When I open the options for "Multicast Rate," the highest available rate is 11 Mbps. From what I understand, wireless G is capable of 56 Mbps (and that is how Apple advertised the Airport Extreme card when I bought it). Why is my multicast rate limited to 11 Mbps and how can I raise it to 56 Mbps?

I've always been a little foggy on multicast. The apple support article seems to imply that it only matters when "certain audio and video streaming servers or other applications with multicast capability" are on your network. (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Airport/5.0/en/ap2087.html)
What if you don't have one of these multicast servers or applications on your network? Does the multicast rate have any effect on your network performance?
My understanding is that the answer is YES - regardless of whether you have one of these multicast servers or not, setting your multicast rate to X means that only airport clients that can achieve a speed of X or greater will be able to connect to the base station. If you set it to 1, then you will extend the range of your network. But sometimes, in a WDS, where multiple base stations on the same channel overlap, I find that my clients have trouble deciding which base station to connect to. So actually, it works better to set the rate a little higher. But I am never quite sure if this is true, or if its just my imagination.
At any rate (no pun intended) , I'm still foggy on multicast and would really appreciate if someone out there could clear things up or direct me to a link that explains what i need to know (starting with an actual definition of multicast).
Thanks

Similar Messages

Airport Extreme multicast rate and closed network

New to Airport Extreme.
Is the multicast rate the same as the TX rate on other routers? I chose 11Mbps during the setup and my Macbook was very slow. I moved it back to 2 Mbps and it sped up. Distance from macbook to airport approx. 24 inches.
Other question/ statement. I assume that the closed network portion of the setup is the same as turning off the SSID of other routers. Do I assume correctly?

goldengti, Welcome to the discussion area!
Is the multicast rate the same as the TX rate on other routers?
Sorry I don't know about other routers. The multicast rate defines the minimum data rate the base station will use and maintain the wireless connection. If you set it to 11 Mbps, the wireless connection will be broken if that data rate can't be maintained.
Other question/ statement. I assume that the closed network portion of the setup is the same as turning off the SSID of other routers. Do I assume correctly?
Yes the same useless option. Regardless of how you set this option on any router, the SSID is still broadcast between any connected clients and the base station. Therefore it only takes a few seconds to discover the SSID.

"bufferbloat", Airport Extreme, and bandwidth limiting?

I have a somewhat complex network setup at home. I have a Cable connection with 20Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, my own Motorola SB6141 cable modem upstream. Plugged into that, I have a recent model Airport Extreme (802.11ac), and an older Airport Extreme set up with a roaming network. The primary clients are recent vintage macbooks, iOS devices, with a smattering of other connected devices (DVR, windows, Synology NAS, etc.
The problem that I'm running into is that network connectivity has lots of issues if I run a large upload that saturates the outbound connection, e.g. with Dropbox or another online backup tool like Arq. When that happens, inbound traffic gets super spotty, and things like Netflix become unusable. peer-to-peer within the network continues to work fine.
As near as I can tell, these are the classic symptoms of "bufferbloat" and from what I've read, the solution to the problem would be to introduce an outbound bandwidth limit (say at 1.98 Mbps) at the first outbound bottleneck, in this case, at the Airport Extreme (ac) connected to the cable modem.
Is there any way to do this? I couldn't find any kind of bandwidth limitation mechanism in the Airport Utility.

Is there any way to do this?
Sorry, but no. The AirPorts are all very simple, bare bones routers with a minimum of functionality.

Airport Extreme LAN address limitations

On our branch office networks, we use different subnets from the 10.x.x.x private networking address space. Most begin with 10.1 or 10.10.
But so far as we can tell, Apple, unlike every single other low-end router vendor, has arbitrarily decided that the AirPort Extreme shall only provide addresses that begin with 10.0.

We are aware of those other ranges, but that does not resolve the problem that a horribly arbitrary limitation that Apple ALONE has imposed on the use of the 10.x.x.x address space is a PROBLEM.
We would have to
1. renumber every last network from scratch to accommodate a limitation that ONLY APPLE imposes.
2. Turn off the router functionality in the AirPort Extreme, dumbing it down into a mere wireless access point.
3. Send the AirPort Extreme back to the supplier.
We have opted for #3-- just send this stupid thing back and never order one again until we can confirm that Apple has corrected these silly design flaws.

Airport Extreme Data Rate

Hi All,
I have a home setup consisting of 2x AirPort Extreme's (5th Gen) connected together via Cat5e. I was just having a browse in the airport utility and noticed my connection status on my extended AirPort Extreme was 'Good' with the data rate only at 100 Mb/s where the maximum was 1,000 Mb/s.
Anyone have any idea's where the bottleneck is here? Or have I possibly misconfigured something?
Thanks in advance.

You are correct, from the Windows Airport Utility you cannot see this information, however from the iPad Airport Utility I can see the following information as shown below. To be this seem's that it is stating the line speed between my two AE's - Correct me if I am wrong....

Is the airport extreme limited to the speed of my other router

I am thinking of buying an airport extreme 2013 but my existing router is quite slow, I want to know whether the airport extreme will be limited to this speed.

LVennell wrote:
So I can use the airport extreme by its self with no other router?
One caveat. If your internet service provider supplies your connection through a combination modem/router, you'll either need to keep it or get a simple modem. If the slowness you were noticing is in the modem function, the Extreme won't speed up your internet access, only communications within your local network.

Multicast rate setting

Has anyone done any experimentation to analytically try and determine how to best set the multicast rate on devices on a network? I'm thinking that since the airport utility will display the signal, noise, and rate information it would be simple to graph what the average rate readings were when the only variable in the experiment was a change to the multicast rate setting.
I'm thinking that you'd arrive at some kind of idea of what to set the multicast rate setting to, based on the signal to noise ratio and throughput.
For example if the highest rate obtained between two devices with the same relative signal to noise ratio was 400 with a particular multicast rate setting on the base unit (connected to the internet) that would be the setting to use. If you experimented by changing just the multicast rate and nothing else, and the rate dropped to 300 for the same relative signal to noise ratio, then that would indicate where to set the multicast rate to.
I hope I'm making sense.
I've recently re-configured my network when I picked up a new 5th generation Airport Extreme and without doing anything my 5Ghz channel connection rate increased by 50%. That's between a 4th and 5th generation Airport Extreme. the rate went from 300 to 450 just by changing the one base station.
I know the 5th generation unit has improved antennas and higher signal output.
What's interesting is that from the 5th generation (base unit connected to the internet) to a 4th generation unit and 3rd generation unit that display identical signal and noise readings to the base unit. The 4th generation device is consistently and constantly higher in terms or xmission rate (450) while the 3rd generation device tops out at (270). The 3rd generation unit is on the same floor as the base unit and much closer than the 4th generation unit. This resulted in the equal signal and noise levels received at the base. You would think that the closer unit (which actually has a 1 db higher received signal at the base unit) would show an equal data rate.
So I'm wondering if Apple did more than just increase the signal level in the new units. Does anyone know what the maximum possible rate readings could be for each generation of extreme base station?
Well, hopefully this pretty technical dive into observed differences between units stimulates some conversation. I only wish I still had access to an RF anechoic chamber and shielded rooms so I could do some real testing.

Tesserax,
I completely understand how multicast works and it's effect on throughput performance. What I was wondering was, if anyone had done any studies or testing to determine that, for example: a multicast rate setting of 10Mbps requires the received signal to be at least 20db above the noise floor and no more than 3 clients connected at the same time.
My reason for being interested in this is that I've divided my home into an upstairs / downstairs network where the upstairs network is linked to the bottom one (which contains the internet access) via a wireless bridge. (running a 'hardline' ethernet connection is not feasible for me at this point) each network has a couple of base stations tied (hardline) to computers and media centers that require high throughput rates (for internet connections and media streaming)
The upstairs/downstairs bridge and these high throughput base stations have been isolated to be on the 5GHz band only. Since there are only 4 of these devices on this isolated network, I'm experimenting with doing everything I can to maximize the throughput over the 5GHz network. The 2.4GHz network (aren't simultaneous routers great!) is serviced by airport express units on both floors and handles all of the 'mobile' and 'lower' speed network needs such as iPads, iPhones, AirPlay (audio). The have lower multicast settings so that they can handle people carrying their iPads and iPhones around while providing great wifi coverage.
I was hoping that someone knew of someplace that a study might have been done that I could read. Maybe I'll have to do it myself over some holiday weekend and post the results. Since playing with the mulicast rate will affect the ability of devices to connect to each other, I think it should only be used as a 'throughput controller' when you're in a situation like I have where you have a 'backbone' network between fixed points that does not have to support clients coming in and out.
Do you happen to know what the full bandwidth potential is for the 5 and 2.4 GHz bands between 2 devices?

Airport Extreme speed limit to 130 Mbit

Is it normal that the maximum speed of the Airport Extreme is always limited to 130 Mbit when you've configued it as 802.11b/g compatible? I've use the Network Utility to check the Link Speed.
I need the 802.11 g mode because sometimes I need to connect some older PC's.
Also before mine network was a wired when. The link speed was 100Mbit. When I copied a file from a Mac to another Mac I got have some transfer speed about 8 a 9 MB/s. (I use the iStat widget to check this).
At this moment mine network has become a wireless one. The link speed is 130Mbit which is higher then the wired network. Although when I'm copying a file from one Mac to another one mine speed transfer is maximum 4 MB/s.
This is half the speed as before.
Is this behaviour normal? Of-course I didn't expect the same results as with the wired network but at least I expected some better results.

I have also noticed that when you setup the Airport Extreme to only the 'n' network at 5GHz you will get a maximum speed transfer of 270Mbit.
But I've find it very strange that when you select the network for b/g/n that you will always be limited to a maximum transfer of 130Mbit. I find it normal that the speed of the network will slow down at the moment that there is a connection busy with a device that only supports b/g.
Most people do need this compatibility. Game-consoles, smartphones, printers and so on. 90% of the time those devices are not connected with the network.
Whenever you setup this mode of compatibly you will have always a slower network then the Airport Extreme is capable of doing. Of-course you can connect another router when setup for 'n' 5GHz and the other setup for b/g. But this isn't the way to go...

Do I need Airport Extreme???

Hello,
I am setting up a wireless network to stream my itunes and netflix.
I am going to buy a couple Apple TV units for around the house.
I already own a 2wire router/modem from ATT.
Is there any benefit to picking up an Airport Extreme since it will just have to plug into my 2wire anyway?
Should I pick one up??? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Hi Bob,
I've been reading your responses to various questions regarding the AirPort Extreme and 2Wire from AT&T and they have been very, very helpful and informative. However the one answer I didn't see from you was the one asked above (?) :
But if the 2wire is limited to g, will that mean my airport extreme will be limited to g also???
I only bring this to your attention because I too would like to know how/if I can expect N speeds from my AirPort Extreme if I connect it to my AT&T 2Wire modem with wifi 'off'.
If the answer is yes then I'll be at the apple store in two shakes getting an AirPort Extreme.
Thanks regardless of the answer.

Airport Extreme Card Data Rate

I've just bought a MacBook Pro which has an Airport Extreme card.....
In order to achieve data rates of 54 Mbps do I have to use an Airport Extreme Base Station?
Or can I still achieve 54 Mbps with a third party 802.11g wireless base station?

You do not need an AEBS to achieve maximum throughput, any 802.11g compliant router will theoretically achieve that speed. Bear in mind that the theoretical speed is never reached in real-world applications. You will be lucky to get one-half that speed.

PC limited connectivity with airport extreme

We still have a PC in the house.
We just added the new AirPort Extreme.
All of the Apple devices and the Zeppelin connected no trouble and have full internet acces.
But for some reason I can't figure out the PC will only connect to the network but gets limited connectivity to the internet.
How do I fix this please?
Thanks

You already know that the AirPort Extreme is operating correctly.
So, something on the PC is blocking the connection attempt to the Internet. That might be the Windows Firewall, the anti-virus program, or Microsoft Security Essentials....if you have it installed on your PC.
Work your way through the guide for troubleshooting Windows connection issues to see if you can find the cause of the block on your PC.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/troubleshoot-network-connection -problems

Roadrunner Cable Modem + Airport Extreme = limited internet :(

I am having trouble gaining full internet access with my Time Warner (Roadrunner) cable modem. They use DHCP to configure TCP/IP, and I need a publicly visible static ip. I have tried many different things to get this to work, but so far nothing. Anyone know how (or if) I can get this to work?
Would be very helpful to know what Roadrunner SoCal limits with their residential service. I cannot find this on their website, and the rep I spoke with said they block nothing. I'm not sure if this is true.

cshamis wrote:
Please, pardon if this is remedial networking for some of you:
It was really helpful, thanks!
The problem is that the airport extreme is "in front of" your computer. So that when Internet services (like BitTorrent) try to connect to your machine (which is expecting them), they hit the Airport first, (which is NOT expecting them)... since it doesn't know what to do with them, it throws them away.
So I know you go on to explain how to let this traffic through, but should I place the airport in front of the modem (I dont even know if this is possible)
The reason why things like WWW work, is because the Airport isn't completely brain-dead. It knows how to "follow a conversation" and it essentially eaves-drops to all outgoing connections from your computer. If your computer deliberately asks for a response, then the Airport extreme "knows enough" to send the expected response back down to your computer. This magic all happens automatically for things like your email, web, ftp, etc.etc... because these services all follow a "back-and-forth" communication model.
The problem with protocols like BitTorrent (or running your OWN webserver for example) means that, you never know who is going to come knocking. It's not that the Airport is denying these "visitors" so much as, it wasn't told that anyone was coming.
To fix the problem you need to tell the Aiport extreme to roll out the welcome mat, and also... you need to the the Airport *where to send these visitors* That is what you do with the NAT port maps. This is how you tell the airport, when somebody comes and knocks on this door, send them to my PC. (Not, my laptop, or my iPhone, or my printer, or anything else that may be on the network: send them to my PC) After all, it is the PC that would be running BitTorrent, or Unreal, or a webserver, or ICQ, or what-have-you...
So now all you have to do is find out the IP of the machine you want to send the traffic to, and then you need to find out what PORTS that traffic arrives on.
For example... if you wanted to run a webserver on your home machine at internal ip: 10.10.10.2; then you would tell the Airport to route all incoming traffic on port 80 (the HTTP port) to internal address 10.10.10.2 (your PC). And that's it.
It has been my experience that BitTorrent uses the following ports:
tcp 13405
udp 13405
tcp 6881-6999
udp 6881-6999
TCP and UDP are two different flavors of internet traffic, and there is a section in the NAT redirections that allow for each... make sure you place them in the proper places.
Hope that helps. If it doesn't, let me know and I'll email you a screenshot of what the config page should look like.
I had already set things up this way ... and it does work, sort of. But I find that in some cases a mere 25% of my attempts to communicate out/back succeed. So I would love to take you up on the offer to send screenshots. Thank you so much for all the help!

Airport Extreme- "Limited or no connectivity" over and over and over

Ok, our property manager gave us an Apple Extreme router (the old round one) and an Airport Express to use as an access point. I'm not an Apple guy, but hey, it was free. I used the the annoying Admin Utility software to configure the Extreme for security and all that (why can't we just configure it with a web browser??).
For the last two weeks, the Apple network consistently drops me 2-3 times per hour, and I get the "limited or no connectivity" notice on my system tray. This happens every time I leave my computer for more than 10 minutes. Usually when I click "repair connection", the network allows me to reconnect, but occasionally I have to reboot. I checked the utility and my router is using the 5.7 firmware, and I figured that perhaps going with a firmware update may prevent the Airport from dropping me all day long.
I can't seem to find any info on this problem. Searching Apple's support pages is disorienting because they don't always specify whether they're talking about the old Airport Extreme or the new 802.11n version. It's common sense that they should have a separate website for each router, since they are not the same thing, and also because they unfortunately bear the same name "EXTREME". After wandering in the fog for a while, I think that I have this right:
Apple Admin Utility 4.2 is all that is necessary to configure the Airport Extreme "Old Round One", and the Airport Utility 5.0 and later is only supported by the Airport Extreme "802.11n". Think I got that right.
Also, looking at the Admin Utility, there is an option in the top menu to "Upload Software", which I surmise means to flash the BIOS with the latest firmware.
First of all, has anyone here had this problem with the flying saucer Airport? Also, is 5.7 the latest firmware? If not, where is it on Apple's site? Is that the solution to my problem?
EDIT: The Airport Express is using the 6.3 firmware.
Dell Latitiude D610 Windows XP Pro

I have the exact same Issue: windows 7, 64-bit running on a Macbook Air 4gb via Bootcamp.
Internet disconects randomly exactly as described on the post above.
It is really annoying!
Any advice?
Thanks a lot!

My new airport extreme transmits at low rates (0-54)and is intermittent? Help!

I need help figuring out why my new 6th generation airport extreme signal is transmitting at a low rate (0-54) and when streaming the signal goes in and out? My equipment is as follows... I have a moterolla extreme DOCsis 3.0 modum, comcast 30 mpbs, and new apple extreme with current airport utility 7.7.1. Any ideas or troubleshooting tips?

When you created your wireless network with the Airport Extreme, did you select having your wireless network backwards compatible with "b/g" devices? If your wireless network was created as "N" compatible for "N" compatible wireless cards only, an iPhone will not be able to connect to your wireless network since the iPhone's wireless card is not "N" compatible.

Data transfer rate Airport Extreme

which is the data transfer rate of the USB port in the Airport Extreme (4ta. Generation)...???
The HDD installed in that port, reads and writes very slow

I executed the test and I have a rate of data transfer of 1.9 escrtura of Mb/s and 2.7 reading Mb/s…. this is very under… What I can do.?
I even reinitiated the Airport and itself with the problem. I directly tested with the ports of iMac, and have DRT of 25.8 and 18.4 Mb/s
Ok, I am assuming that your measurements are in Mega Bytes per Second (MB/s) and not Mega Bits per Second (Mb/s). Even so, I would agree that you are getting low data transfer rates.
What is the make and model of the USB HDD that you have attached to the AirPort Extreme? Is it formatted in HFS+ or FAT32?
Also, the 25.8 & 18.4 readings when you have this drive attached directly is a bit low as well. I would expect something more like: 35 MB/s (read) & 25 MB/s (write) for a USB 2.0-connected HDD.

AirPort Extreme Multicast Rate limitation

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