Upgrading Airport Extreme on mbp 9,1

There is no 802.11AC board for this series. The newer Retina series used a different connection type.

There are two versions of the 2011/12 Airport board but its related to the version of Bluetooth 2.1 vs 4.0.

2011/12 AirPort bd

2012 ~ 2015 Retina AirPort bd

@the_kat - Your DSL connection is not overly fast DSL vs Cable vs Fiber: Comparing Internet Options so consider that as one of your bottle necks (#1)

It sounds like your DSL Router does not offer a WiFi AP, so your using the AirPort Extreme as your WiFi AP via the Ethernet connection between the DSL and the AirPort Extreme. Then the version of WiFi this model offers then becomes your next bottle neck (#2).

Next on the number of AirPort units (repeaters) which are scattered around your home as well as what is being done concurrently across all of your devices which are connecting over WiFi. The best way to think this is like water and pipes! A 1” pipe let say is able to push 1 gallon of water, so a 2” pipe then is able to move 2 gallons, and 4” is 4 gallons. We can’t get more water though then what the pipe can move.

So if we only have a 4” pipe at the DSL we could have one device taking the 4 gallons of water not leaving anything for anyone else. If the device is only taking 2 gallons then there is still two gallons available for others either two devices taking one gallon each or one device taking 2 gallons. Hopefully this makes sense!

OK, so what you have is a complex setup with multiple repeaters so if they are wired via Ethernet then things are better! But lets say you are using strictly WiFi, this is where things get messy! WiFi offers two bands 2.4 GHz and 5GHz. So if the repeaters are setup so the back-haul is setup on the faster 5GHz then we only have the contention between the repeaters for access to the AP device (Star wired), If you have back-haul distances which need multiple hops then that degrades the connection! As you can’t have two 5GHz connections concurrently within the same data flow (repeated), one connection will end up being on the slower 2.4GHz connection bottle neck (#3)

So if you have a sizable family all watching YouTube or running games they are not getting the needed throughput if they are all fighting for access to the internet at the same time. The devices them selves then become the last bottle neck (4#)

So you need to rethink your bottlenecks, are you being constrained by your setup?

• 1# Going for a faster internet connection, consider that.
• 2# Stepping up to newer 802.11ax or better WiFi gear
• 3# Going with a full mesh design will offer better performance and having the repeaters wired back to the Internet router would be best.
• 4# Look at what each devices needs are. As an example I have a weather station which I’ve setup on a dedicated 2.4GHz WiFi connection to an old AirPort which then is wired to my network switch over a 10MB Ethernet connection. Independent of this connection I have a wired 1GB Ethernet network between my computers and TV’s, I also have a three meshed WiFi AP’s so my wireless devices can connect over this 1GB network to the internet or a media server I have.