Very slow transfer speeds with Airport Extreme and MacBook

I have been using a new Airport Extreme without problem at my home for the past six weeks. The speed and range was excellent with both my MacBook Pro and the MacBook which I purchased a few weeks ago. I came out to Greece with both laptops and a new AP Extreme box for my home network here. After set up I noticed that internet access was lethargic on the MacBook and file transfer between the two computers was extremely slow. The problem seems to be with the new MacBook (although it was working well in London). I've done some speed tests and the internet download speed is only 48 kpbs! I also notice that the range is very poor--in the room next to the router I am down to five bars. If I connect to the AP Extreme with cable I get the full 1Mbps I would normally expect here in Athens (ADSL nominal 2Mbps). The MacBook Pro has no problems with wireless access speeds or range, so I am assuming this has to be a problem with the AP extreme card in the MacBook. Is there anything I have overlooked? Perhaps something to do with setting up the new AP Extreme here in Athens?

By process of elimination I realised that the only cause of the sudden slowness must be software that I had installed recently. The only software I had added was a wifi utility to detect available networks--open or protected. Unlikely as it sounds, quitting the utility (which I had set to load on startup) made a dramatic improvement in performance.

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Slow wifi speeds with airport extreme and win 7

i have an airport extreme router that i love. i recently noticed that my wifi was running slow. after performing a speed check i confirmed that my speeds were about 3-6mb/sec. this was done on my win 7 pro machine. while seated in front of my pc, i ran the same check using my iphone and i get 50mb/sec. this continues to be the case now for like a week. does anyone know if a recent windows update has done something. router has been restored to factory settings to no avail. when i first set up the router a few months ago, both machines were getting 50mb/sec downloads. not sure what has happened. any help would be appreciated.thanks

By process of elimination I realised that the only cause of the sudden slowness must be software that I had installed recently. The only software I had added was a wifi utility to detect available networks--open or protected. Unlikely as it sounds, quitting the utility (which I had set to load on startup) made a dramatic improvement in performance.

Very slow transfer speeds with external hard drives through Firewire and US

Hi All,
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little. Apple support suggested I post my issue here. Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
Thanks in advance.

Hi Kappy, thanks for the information.
So I rejigged my setup a tad. My RAID 0 is still FW800, the second drive is back on FW400 on the back port, and the third is USB 2.0 on the back as well.
It's interesting to note that I saw the FW800 taking a bandwidth hit if the FW400 drives was being read/written to. For example, if I was averaging 50-60MB/sec on the FW800 drives and copy something large to the FW400 drive, each drive averages out to about 30/MB second, roughly half the FW800 speed I was getting. The USB while the slowest didn't cause any slowness on the FW drives.
Here are my Xbench results. These results are from each drive being benchmarked individually with no other drives being tested at the same time.
*MyBook 2TB in a RAID 0 configuration: Firewire 800*
Results 75.42
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 75.42
Sequential 80.92
Uncached Write 69.16 42.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 110.79 62.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 53.66 15.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.76 68.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 70.62
Uncached Write 36.38 3.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 140.55 45.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.26 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.38 16.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 1TB on Firewire 400*
Results 47.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 47.73
Sequential 52.47
Uncached Write 48.45 29.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 53.76 30.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 43.69 12.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.91 35.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 43.78
Uncached Write 17.29 1.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 98.83 31.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.33 0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.01 18.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 500GB on USB 2.0*
Results 40.60
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD 5000AA External
Disk Test 40.60
Sequential 35.99
Uncached Write 37.31 22.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 37.22 21.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 26.62 7.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 50.27 25.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 46.55
Uncached Write 20.37 2.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.44 21.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.55 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 86.71 16.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
So Kappy are you saying that those speeds look normal?
Thanks

Very slow download speed with Airport Express

Hi.
I've recently experienced painfully slow downlink (download) speed using Airport Express.
My WiFi configuration:
- main router: WRT54G connected to my provider (speed limit: 4Mbit up/down link),
- AirPort Express with WiFi N and Airtunes hooked up to stereo in living room,
- AirPort Express WiFi G and Airtunes connected to stereo on bedroom.
Second Airport is currently not used to simplify tests and description of my problem.
The problem: when connecting from MacBook to Airport Express I can't reach more than approx. 512kbit downloading from internet, usually even 300kbit, while uplink reaches easily 2.5Mbit (limited probably by my network provider). While connected to WRT54G I can get 2.5 up to 4Mbit downlink, same when using cable directly plugged in to WRT54G.
I tried changing channels, switching different options in Airport with no effect - still getting pathetic download speeds. Even worse - browsing experience is awful, with frequent slowdowns, etc.
I tried different encryption methods, and seems like only switching it off at all (unprotected network) seems to let my Airport work on full speed (2.5Mbits symmetrically up/down, up to 4Mbits - provider speed limit) - which is unacceptable, I refuse to set up and use unprotected network at home.
Problem is clearly in Airport or in interaction between Airport and Macbook. I've just ran out of ideas - can you help me?

I can't offer any help with your problem except for the fact that mine has recently done the exact same thing. It's ridiculous, for months and months it was extremely fast and then all of a sudden it takes 20 minutes to open a simple browser page. Something is definitely wrong with the airport because all other wireless internet connections from other routers are as usual. \

Read/Write speeds with Airport Extreme and USB Hard Drives

Anybody know how fast the read/write speeds are with a USB hard drive and the Airport Extreme Base Station?
My Setup
I have a 17 MBP (2010) and a 13 MBP (2011) - no SSD's
MBP generally connect via 802.11n 5Ghz with a very strong signal
Gigabit connection on a Windows Desktop
I have a variety of external drives (7200, 5400, Drobo) at varying capacity (320GB, 2TB, 5.6TB)
Goals
Backup: Time machine
Backup: File copies of pictures and home videos (greater than 1GB files)
Backup: Crashplan
File sharing: Aperture libraries--not sure if that is possible or practical. That is something that I need to research further...but on the off chance people have experience with it.
Thanks!

ishjen wrote:
Anybody know how fast the read/write speeds are with a USB hard drive and the Airport Extreme Base Station?
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
Apple's AirPort base stations aren't known for fast file serving, but for most purposed they're fast enough.
I can't comment specifically on your Aperture plan, but with some software it's important to avoid simultaneous access by more than one user.

Horrible transfer speeds with Airport Extreme

Have an usb drive on the airport which wirelessly is really slow. Now got to try 2 computers connected to the airport with ethernet cables and the file transfers between them was still ridicilously slow?! Tried plugging them together with a ethernet cable going straight from one to the other with no router in between and got like 1000 times faster transfers. Is there anything to try to fix this? it's ridicilous.... the airport has 7.3.2 firmware

Just got a new dual band Airport Extreme to replace an aging Linksys wrt54g and take advantage of 802.11n.
What a disappointment so far. After wrestling with an obvious degradation in wireless throughput for a couple hours, I cabled a laptop directly into the Airport and was pretty shocked to see that throughput is about 1/3 what it was with the Linksys. I tried everything that seemed configurable to see if this model was just particularly inefficient at something (e.g. disable NAT, disable IPv6, etc...) and nothing made any improvement.
I'm on the latest firmware, 2.4.1.

Slow Internet Speeds with Airport Extreme

I am noticing a dramatic slow down with my Airport Extreme. However, I have noticed this is an intermittent issue. Here are the specs of what I am running:
• Airport Extreme Base station that is plugged into a cable modem. The AEBS is routing the IP addresses.
• Plugged into the AEBS is an 800mhz iMac that is hardwired in. No slow down is noted on this computer.
• MacBook (Less than 2 months old) is connected to the AEBS wirelessly.
• iPhone is connected to the AEBS wirelessly.
Where I am having the problems is with the MacBook. I will have full signal strength and yet it takes for ever to load a page. Plus sometimes the connection will time out. As stated above this is an intermittent issue. Sometimes everything works fine, other times the connection has issues. All pieces of equipment are running the latest firmware. Does anyone have any suggestions to solve this issue?

I would recommend changing the wireless channel of the Extreme.
Open Airport Utility, and select Manual Setup. Note on the summary page what the channel is set to, most often it will be set to channel 6 (Automatic), but it could be anything between 1-11.
Goto the Wireless tab and adjust the channel so it several channels apart from the current one. If it is on channel 6, I recommend channel 1 or 11.

Slow transfer speed with Airport Express N in an N-only 5Ghz network.

I have a Time Capsule set to 802.11n-only (5GHz).
My new Airport Express N is set to extend such network.
I have a Mac Mini connected via Ethernet to the ethernet port of the Airport Express; however when I transfer files from the Mac Mini to Time Capsule the speed is incredibly slow (1 Megabyte of data every 3-4 seconds).
I know I'm supposed to get 100Mb/s via the Ethernet airport.
Any ideas?

I have the same problem with the 5ghz mode from my time Capsule. The connection is fine until the wireless connection is maxed out, then the wireless conenction drops and I have to click on the airport toolbar icon to get it reconnected (Just click on the menu item...I dont actually have to re-select the wireless network).
Dropping down to the 2.4ghz mode solves the problem, but I want the bandwidth increase 5ghz gives me. Thats why I bought the Time Capsule to begin with.
Some have said that this issue started with Leopard. I cannot confirm this since I didnt have any 802.11n equipment until after I upgraded to Leopard. Also, I noticed that with Time Capsule firmware 7.3 the connection drops but the airport icon stays solid. In 7.3.1 the connection drops and the airport icon greys out (indicating no connection).

Very slow download speeds with ATT U-Verse

Hello,
Experiencing very slow download speeds with Macbook Pro 2011, on Lion, and ATT UVerse Max, which should allow for an avg. 11-12 MBPS speed. Instead, I get a fluctuating 60-370 kbps speed. I am not experiencing this problem on my Windows machines (Laptop running Windows 7 and Desktop on XP), it is only affecting the Macbook pro. I wonder if this issue is a known problem with ATT U-Verse and Macs, I spent hours yesterday with their support online and they couldn't help me, stating that from their side all settings were OK; the first representative from ATT re-booted the router remotely and that seemed to work for about 10 minutes, and then it went back to a crawling speed...
Any suggestions welcome!
Thanks

Do you have QOS enabled in your router? Did you try plugging the win7 laptop directly and check the speed?

Slow transfer speeds between Mac Pro and Shared Drive on Windows Domain

Hi Guys,
Getting really slow transfer speeds when I try and transfer a file from a Mac Pro to a shared network drive on one of our Windows 2003 Servers.
The Mac Pro is logged on to windows domain. This data is transferring via our hard network, not via wireless. Not having any other transfer speed issues on any other PC's.
For example an 8mb file took around 45 mins.
Hope you can help. Many Thanks.

I saw this at a site where they were using DFS with Server 2003. When the few Mac's they had connected to the actual server and uploaded the file it was okay. But when it was sending the file via the \\DFS_node\share_name the Mac took heaps longer for the same file. Watching the Activity Monitor > Network monitor you could see gaps with the data transfer, as if there was some pausing between packets. A pcap showed that there was constant DNS requests coming from the Mac, even after the connection to the share was made. The same wasn't happening when the connection via SMB was directly to the actual file server. As there was only a few Mac on site they left it with the direct connection but were getting an MS specialist in to look at it. Never heard what happened with that one but you may want to try monitoring the packet transfer to see if the data movement is contstant or breaking. I'd also recommend getting Wireshark to monitor the transfer. You can compare upload to download and maybe even the transfer from the Mac to an MS workgroup share.

Help : very slow connection speed with AEBS and iMac

I connect to the internet using my newly purchased AEBS. I have a MacBook and an 24" iMac ( purchased in Nov 2007). My iMac showed very slow connecting speed of <1 MB/s download; with my MacBook placed just 1 foot from my iMac, the MacBook showed an amazing download speed of 20MB/s. If i connect the iMac to the AEBS using ethernet cable, it can get a very high speed.
So, where is the problem??
I am new to wireless, please help. I use iMac more than my MacBook at home.
Actually, i did not touch the any of the advance setting of the AEBS.

You know, I am experiencing the same problem. My wife's PC and iPhone are blazing fast, but my MacBook is accessing the internet at about dial-up speeds. Very frustrating and I haven't yet found the culprit.
Anyone???

Using a current Time Capsule with Airport Extreme and Airport Express Older generation

I am looking to achieve a fast local network that allows streaming of music and video. I have bought a Time Capsule to replace the Telstra router (Thomson Router) by linking it using ethernet cable and then set up a network that also uses and older airport extreme and express router (g standard).
It would appear that the local network speed is slow - how can I assess the connection speed in the local network - both wireless and for ethernet? I believe that there is a speed indication on my two older macs running OSX 10.5 but not in OSX 10.6. Is there a tool to assess the local network speed?
The current set up works less well than previously only using the Thomson router, so the initial results are very disappointing. Not even streaming music seems to work and it stutters to halt.
I had expected that the dual band functionality would allow fast local connections where needed. What do I need to change?
Thanks you.
Tom

Hi Bob,
The two old airports (extreme and express) are connected wirelessly to the time capsule base station with the following use:
- round extreme base station supports a printer only - remote WDS indicated in set up
- airport express supports remote speakers - set up does not indicate WDS status
I noticed in another note to provide a second network name to 5GHz network and connect the modern computers, ipad (seems to be able to connect) and apple tv to the 5 GHz network, leaving the other on the separate network. Also the two computers, apart from the laptops are connected via ethernet to use the GB ethernet, but I am not sure whether that speed is achieved or whether a firewire connection between the two would be better. use examples are:
1. Wirelessly I am trying to use three speakers - computer, apple tv and express - to have to listen to the same music in three rooms.
2. Over ethernet, I am using the the powermac as a file server to mac mini, but would like to be bale to access photo libraries (both Iphoto and Aperture) ideally over the network. It works well with starting the powermac in target disk mode but seems slow over what should be a very fast ethernet network.
The connection with the service providers router and time capsule is bridged - seems to be the only way of providing internet access - however, it also seems to allow for shared devices to be visible across the two time capsule and the Thomson network.
Obviously, this will need some more experimentation but any input would be appreciated.
Thank you and regards,
Tom
PS> Timezone wise I am currently living in Australia - must change my profile one day.....

Trouble with airport extreme and express

Hey all. I recently bought a new airport extreme and I'm now having problems setting up a network with the airport express. the airport express that we have is connected to a very old G3 iMac because it doesn't have an airport card and is upstairs. I have so far managed to set up the airport extreme so my G4 iBook and my MacBook Pro are both connected via wireless. The trouble seems to be that I can't get the next step set up as i'm not very experienced with networks and I can't get the express to establish a connection with the extreme. i hope somebody could help me sort out the next step. On a side note, this new airport extreme doesn't allow my xbox 360 to connect to it and i wondered if there is any way I can get it to connect again via wireless, either by changing a setting or the security?
Any help and feedback would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks.

applefan08, Welcome to the discussion area!
To continue to use the AirPort Express (AX) to give Internet access to the iMac G3, you will need to configure the 2 devices to use WDS to wirelessly connect. The instructions start on Page 41 in "Designing AirPort Extreme 802.11n Networks" (http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/DesigningAirPortExtreme802.11nNetworks.pdf).

Very slow download speed with intermittent halts

Need some help.
I run Apple os/x latest version and have since yesterday begun to experience constant very slow download speeds.
I have rebooted the router and I have reset it. I have tested with wireless and wired into router. No real change.
The results are below and are pretty consistent no matter when or with what computer I test it with.
This is very frustrating and I would like to know if anyone has experienced this and if there is anything I can do before calling for service.
Thank you in advance.
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
SendBufferSize set to [131768]
running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 5.44Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 1.94Mb/s
------ Client System Details ------
OS data&colon; Name = Mac OS X, Architecture = x86_64, Version = 10.8.2
Java data&colon; Vendor = Apple Inc., Version = 1.6.0_37
------ Web100 Detailed Analysis ------
Client Receive Window detected at 359104 bytes.
10 Mbps Ethernet link found.
Link set to Full Duplex mode
Information: throughput is limited by other network traffic.
Good network cable(s) found
Normal duplex operation found.
Web100 reports the Round trip time = 22.89 msec; the Packet size = 1448 Bytes; and
There were 159 packets retransmitted, 288 duplicate acks received, and 394 SACK blocks received
The connection stalled 9 times due to packet loss
The connection was idle 2.01 seconds (16.75%) of the time
This connection is sender limited 35.49% of the time.
This connection is network limited 64.51% of the time.
Excessive packet loss is impacting your performance, check the auto-negotiate function on your local PC and network switch
Web100 reports TCP negotiated the optional Performance Settings to:
RFC 2018 Selective Acknowledgment: ON
RFC 896 Nagle Algorithm: ON
RFC 3168 Explicit Congestion Notification: OFF
RFC 1323 Time Stamping: ON
RFC 1323 Window Scaling: ON
Information: Network Middlebox is modifying MSS variable
Server IP addresses are preserved End-to-End
Information: Network Address Translation (NAT) box is modifying the Client's IP address
Server says [71.100.xxx.xxx] but Client says [192.168.1.9]

Both wired or wireless.
auto - negotiate
Thank you.

Problem with Airport extreme and Time machine

I recently purchased a 320gig external hard drive for Time machine. I connected it to my Airport extreme but it is not being recognized for some unknown reason. If I directly connect it to my iMac it works perfectly. I've updated with the latest firmware and it should work via USB with Airport extreme. Any suggestions why it is not working?

angelop wrote:
I have used the following for about two years.
-MBP, Airport Extreme, External HD (1TB) for my time machine.
You probably know, that's "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See the Using Time Machine with a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
To get around this issue, I have switched off the Time Machine, and am only turning on once a week or so, to grab any changes or additions I've made. I've been doing this for about 6 months now with no problems.
Now whenever I do this, (It should only be backing up an album or two from iTunes,) it tries to back up my whole system again. EVERY TIME. It did not do this before.
If you go too long between backups, Time Machine will do a new, full backup. And once it decides to do that, it will keep trying until it succeeds. There are some other possibilities as well. See #D2 in the Using Time Machine with a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.
If none of those seem to explain it, see #A1 there; download the TM Buddy widget, copy and post the messages here.
Why are you only backing-up once a week? Time Machine was designed to back up changes hourly, as long as your Mac is awake and the TC is in range. It will protect you best that way, and unless there's a problem, those backups will usually be very quick.
But if you're only going to back up once a week or so, then Time Machine is not the best app for you. See Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.

Very slow transfer speeds with Airport Extreme and MacBook

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