SillyDog701

[Antony]

A study showed that download speeds for consumers using WiFi stations are on average 30% slower than those use fixed connection, because of physical barriers and interferences from devices like cordless telephone, microwave ovens etc.

"Set up your laptop at location at home where you get a good signal," said professor Andy Nix from Bristol University.

"When you are far from the WiFi station, on battery, and your microwave is on -- the connection is not that great."

It is starting to become an issue for users when they are engaged in online gaming, video streaming, VoIP and video calls.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.0 Firefox/3.6.15

[Antony]

For those who are interested, I have 3 AirPort Extreme Base Stations and 1 Time Capsule Base Station plus 1 AirPort Express Base Station (all capable of 802.11n network) in this house.

The house is not that big, but the multiple base stations (in roaming network setting, except the AirPort Express) provides great signal coverage around the house.

If I just have one base station and placed in the centre of the house, it should probably provide enough coverage, however, I wouldn't expect a good coverage, hence, I went for multiple base stations.

The Mac Pro is connected to AirPort Extreme Base Station with a cat.6 ethernet cable and (bridged) 802.11n WiFi network.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.0 Firefox/3.6.15

[PaulD]

Are these AirPort bases on separate channels? Or is the question moot?

There is a free nifty Windows-only product that is very good at basic wireless diagnostics.
http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/ (Inside SSID's, that is.)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110218 Firefox/3.6.14 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[Antony]

All my AirPort Extreme (and Time Capsule) base stations have different channel numbers. They all have the same Wireless Network Name, and connected together with ethernet cables (Cat6) for Roaming Networking set up. This allows me to keep connected while moving from one end of the house to another end (hopping through base stations).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.0 Firefox/3.6.15

[Don_HH2K]

Here on campus we run 802.11n networks on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Even though I don't have an 802.11n card, I've found that by running my card in 802.11a mode instead of 802.11g mode, I can get slightly better throughput as the airwaves aren't as choked with traffic as they are on the lower-frequency band.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110315 Firefox/4.0b13pre