More wireless blues and traps for young players.

For the last month or so, my wireless has been getting very flakey. So bad the internet keeps dropping out in the back half of the house, and the wireless network disappearing altogether.

With younger families moving into the neighbourhood, it’s little surprise the number of wireless networks has increased dramatically. There are 3 – 4 at the back of the house, and 4 – 5 at the front of the house.

There’s a huge problem running your base stations on 5GHz only. I could never figure out why my iPhone could never pick up on the network in the front of the house. The answer was, the newer Airport Extreme out back runs dual band, whereas the 2nd gen device runs 2.4 or 5. As the iPhone only supports 2.4, it could use the network within range of the dual band Airport, but not the older 2nd gen running 5GHz only.

In a nutshell, with so many other networks around, it’s no longer possible to extend the network down to the back of the house. This has ultimately led to running ethernet which has brought about some massive benefits.
The foremost of these is being able to use the AppleTV. On wireless trying to watch movies or listen to music was an exercise in frustration. 8 minutes to buffer a 2 min video! Now I can encode my DVDs and watch them far less effortlessly on the ATV.

The compromise was splitting the house into 3 separate wireless networks with the 4th gen Airport Extreme in the front of the house. It runs a 2.4 and 5GHz network. The latter is used for everything including the iPad2 that can use 5Ghz.
The second is the 2.4 for iPhones. The third runs down the back for my office.

The other tip I picked up to improve performance is to drop the multicast down. This allows devices to connect at lower quality radio levels, EG: 1 – 2 bars.

It’s not ideal having to swap networks with the phones, but I’m not constantly walking between the 2 halves of the house.

Maybe in another couple of months I come up with another solution. Meanwhile I have uninterrupted internet

Tags: Airport, Airport Extreme, Internet, iPad Wireless, iPhone Wireless, Wireless

This entry was posted on December 22, 2011 at 9:16 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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