I have a recent model (bought 1-2 years ago) Airport Extreme that, until yesterday, has worked flawlessly.
Starting yesterday, my wireless speeds have tanked. I first suspected my ISP, but that doesn't seem to be the problem - my speeds seem to be fine through my wired devices (albeit subjectively - I haven't measured), just not the ones connected via Wi-Fi.
My setup is:
- A cable modem with a CAT-6 cable to the Airport Extreme.
- A CAT-6 cable from the Airport Extreme to a cheap 8-port switch.
- CAT-6 from the switch to a wall patch panel, which runs under the house to ports in 4 other rooms (where my wired devices live).
The devices that are wired (Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One) all seem to perform fine - I can stream video, download game updates, etc. at decent speeds. My Macbook Pro, Android phone, iPod and iPad are all affected by the slowness, though.
Thinking there was maybe some sort of priority given to streaming packets at some level, I also tried loading the Netflix player on my Macbook (connected via Wi-Fi), but that was also slow, leading me to believe that Wi-Fi, specifically, is the problem.
Some other pertinent details:
- I have a 200Mbps plan via Time Warner, and a very recent cable modem (the model name/number escapes me) capable of close to 400Mbps. I've achieved the full speed of my plan regularly until yesterday. Nothing in my setup changed, so this almost certainly can't be a result of anything I've done.
- Strangely, when I reset all of my internet hardware (modem, Airport Extreme, switch) and open a page in a browser on my Macbook, I briefly see fast Wi-Fi speeds. Within as little as a few seconds, though, my speeds drop severely (in the neighborhood of 0-5Mbps). I've even seen the same drop over the course of an online speed test - I can actually watch the "speedometer" needle gradually droop down to almost zero.
- I need to try connecting my MBP straight to my cable modem to troubleshoot further - I'm sure that will tell me more - but the adapter cable I ordered is still in the mail.
- I'll try a factory reset on the Airport Extreme tonight or tomorrow, but it would be nice to avoid that if possible.
Are there any common issues that can explain this? Any standard troubleshooting steps that I may not have considered?