Airport Extreme with Cat6 Ethernet

Hello guys,

Here is my situation,

I have a Sony Vaio laptop that is connected via a Cat6 cable to my Airport Extreme. I have a bunch of hard drives connected to the laptop via USB 3 and I'm sharing all their contents on my network.

The laptop I use to access those shares is the newest version of the Macbook Air; meaning that it supports AC WiFi.

The problem I'm facing is that the transfer rate of the files over the network is a bit slow: around 12mb/sec. When I first changed from Cat5 to Cat6, it gave me around 65mb/sec. However, now it dropped to 12mb, which is the same rate I used to get when I had my Vaio connected via a Cat5 cable. So right now, I think my Cat6 cable is backwardly compatible to Cat 5.

My question is, why the sudden drop in speed? Is my analysis about backward compatibility correct? Will forcing my laptop, or the Airport Extreme to only accept Cat6 connection help?

Thanks in advance,,,

I think you're looking in the wrong place for problems/solutions. Cat 5 is more than capable of 65mb/s, Cat 5e can run at near cat6 gigabit speeds (which if it's a new cable, you probably have 5e).

I'd suggest you're bottleneck is most likely the laptop or interference on the wifi channel. Connect your macbook by cable and try that first to eliminate wifi issues.

mrplow said:

I think you're looking in the wrong place for problems/solutions. Cat 5 is more than capable of 65mb/s, Cat 5e can run at near cat6 gigabit speeds (which if it's a new cable, you probably have 5e).

I'd suggest you're bottleneck is most likely the laptop or interference on the wifi channel. Connect your macbook by cable and try that first to eliminate wifi issues.

Click to expand...

What is the best way to measure your network speed?

DavidH

Well.... that's an open question.

Pure network speed - ping one ip address from another. But If you're talking about data throughput try Helios

But you need to bear in mind that wireless conditions change all the time. You can use a tool like iStumbler to check for channel interference from other nearby networks.
Another big factor is the data type. Typically using USB disks data throughput when moving smaller files is slower than equivalent larger file(s). i.e. a 1gb file will typically transfer quicker than 1000 x 1mb files across USB. So the data mix will vary the throughput.
You also have a laptop controlling the external drives so it's load at any given time may also vary and therefore skew/change data transfer rates.

Out of interest how are you currently measuring your speeds?

It's a bit more rough and ready approach but I'd suggest getting a file 500mb-1gb in size. Time how long it takes to copy from an external to the sony laptop. Then how long it takes to copy from the sony to the macbook over wifi, then from sony to macbook but cabled then from external hard disk to macbook via the sony both wireless and wired. That'll give you a good idea of how each component is performing.