[Kave]

Hello folks. I just got my new Broadband connection which is a quite fast 10MB one.
I previously used a 128KB connection and I was very happy to upgrade. Since we have two portable iBooks in the household I have a Apple Airport base station. It is the snow white model with two ethernet jacks but without Airport extreme.
I use the airport base station as a router for two computers connected to a 100MB switch which sits behind the airport basestation.
I noticed while transferring larges files through the Internet that my performance was not close to the promised 10MB in or 10MB out. Here are some figures:
200kb/s downloading, 350kb/S uploading.

I disconnected the airport and connected my VDSL modem directly to the switch:
1.1MB/s downloading, 800kb/s uploading.

Any ideas or is the Airport just too old? It's suposed to be 100MB internally.

[sideus]

I've got the graphite base station. It is only 10MB when connected to my ethernet switch.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Kave:
Hello folks. I just got my new Broadband connection which is a quite fast 10MB one.
I previously used a 128KB connection and I was very happy to upgrade. Since we have two portable iBooks in the household I have a Apple Airport base station. It is the snow white model with two ethernet jacks but without Airport extreme.
I use the airport base station as a router for two computers connected to a 100MB switch which sits behind the airport basestation.
I noticed while transferring larges files through the Internet that my performance was not close to the promised 10MB in or 10MB out. Here are some figures:
200kb/s downloading, 350kb/S uploading.

I disconnected the airport and connected my VDSL modem directly to the switch:
1.1MB/s downloading, 800kb/s uploading.

Any ideas or is the Airport just too old? It's suposed to be 100MB internally.

I believe the Airport works as a "hub," which would mean bandwidth is shared. If you were transferring from one machine to another, each would get about 1/2 the bandwidth.

So with the naieve assumption that you'd get the full 10 Mb/sec, you'd see about 1 Mb/sec total. Divide by 2 and you'd see around 500kb/sec.

Now account for the "fudge factor", because these things never run at 100% of rated, and I'd say 350 Kbit/sec sounds about right. The 802.11b usually runs about 50-80% of theoretical peak, while 802.11g usually runs about 30%-50%!

[spitty27]

my airport graphite died 3 times and we finally decided to get the 802.11b netgear. no problems so far (6 mo.) and its wonderful. more reliable than airport and can do so much more as a router.

[cwasko]

Originally posted by CatOne:
So with the naieve assumption that you'd get the full 10 Mb/sec, you'd see about 1 Mb/sec total. Divide by 2 and you'd see around 500kb/sec.

Now account for the "fudge factor", because these things never run at 100% of rated, and I'd say 350 Kbit/sec sounds about right. The 802.11b usually runs about 50-80% of theoretical peak, while 802.11g usually runs about 30%-50%!

Uh. You got some seriously bad math here. 10Mbps/2 = 5Mbps ~= 5000kbps NOT 500.

If the OP is only getting about around 350 kbps from the Base Station, then I'd look into other sources of conflict. How far is your computer from the base station? What is in between the computer and the base station (walls, metal, concrete)? Are you in an office environment? Are there other 2.4GHz devices around (cordless phones, microwaves)?

I have an original Apple Base Station and I easily can transfer 5Mbps over it - if you are only getting 350kbps - then something else is seriously wrong.

Another note: the 802.11b technology has a max of 11Mbps. If you have it connected to a 100/10 hub, then it will only connect to other wired devices at 10Mbps.

[Kave]

As I wrote in my post I was not concerened about the Ariport speed from the base station, just speed when using the Airport base station as a router to two computers connected to a 100MB switch. I know the 11MBps promised by apple is a joke, ie it is half the speed of a 10MB cable network, but Apple promised 100MB on the lan ports if I am not wrong on this issue.

[chabig]

Be careful not to confuse bits per second and bytes per second. You said you got a 10 megabyte per second line to replace your 128 kilobyte per seconds line. I think you meant "bits" per second in both cases. So if you can get 1.1 megabytes per second on a download, you've probably maxed out that line.

The speed you get on an airport connected machine is dependent upon the quality of the signal, which depends a lot on distance from the base station. That could be a factor here.

You say your download and upload speeds are slow, but what if you transfer a file from a wireless machine to a wired one? That would be a good test of that wireless link.

Chris

[tooki]

Network equipment threads belong in the Networking forum.

tooki