The point of this post is to hopefully save any reader the aggravation I just went through over the last several hours coupled with the years of missed performance.

The Topology:

The main access point is an Apple Airport Extreme 802.11ac access point connected to a Comcast cable modem at 1GB/s. The access point is connected to a 600MB/s PowerLine network via Gigabit ports and a Gigabit switch for local hardwired clients. There are two Apple Airport Express 802.11n access points connected via the PowerLine network for the upper and lower floors of a three floor home, respectively. Everything was auto-configured using Apple defaults.

The Symptom:

I just purchased a Surface Pro 3. And discovered that its WiFi speed was 3MB/s. After resolving several Microsoft-related issues, I boosted performance to a whopping 15-20MB/s. Not settling for this, I spent several hours researching…

The Problems:

I discovered several issues upon troubleshooting everything:

• The out-of-box defaults use a single SSID for both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band. It turns out that a number of Windows systems do not like this configuration and will end up on the 2.4 GHz band. Based on anecdotal testing, I may have had some Apple devices in this category as well. 
• Out-of-box defaults left no control over channels. Clearly I had some channel overlap between the access points going, which explained why performance degraded when devices were active across more than one access point.

The Solution:

• Configure a separate SSID for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ranges. Point any 5 GHz capable device to the 5 GHz SSID. 
• Manually configure the channels for the 2.4 GHz ranges
  • Channels 1, 6, and 11 were used – as they do not overlap. Note: You can really only get 3 2.4 GHz access points in a given location before you start getting channel overlap as the spectrum used per channel overlaps with its neighbors (e.g. – Channel 1 overlaps with 2, 3, 4, and 5).
• Manually configure the channels for the 5 GHz ranges
  • Channels 36, 40, and 44 were used; there are varying reports that these would slightly overlap but no issues were seen in routine testing

Now, 5 GHz devices routinely get 100MB/s+ from the Internet when on the main access point and 50-60 MB/s when on a remote access point going through the PowerLine network. 

Hope this helps!