AirPort Extreme in PowerBooks - question about setup

It will connect to any 802.11g or 802.11b wireless router/access point as long as the manufacture followed the standards correctly. Meaning, it will work with all brand-name routers even most no-name ones.

Yeah, Airport is pretty good about compatibility -- it also supports more wireless security modes than most third-party products do (such as WPA2), adding to its compatibility.

The only limitations of which I know:

- 802.11a networks are out, obviously. I have never personally heard of anyone using one in years, but you never know

- Sometimes, there is inconsistency in the way manufacturers use passwords for WEP, in particular. Of course, they shouldn't use WEP at all, but there's still a lot of hardware floating around without WPA or WPA2 support. But WEP can treat a password as an alphanumeric string (which gets converted to a Hex key) or as the hex key directly. Sometimes, the alphanumeric strings don't work right across brands, and you have to copy in the hex string. I have never seen a network *fail* to work because of this. Just a hassle.

- Any proprietary super-high-speed standard will back down to 802.11g (these are the "108 MBPS" routers that some companies sell) -- they should always work at 802.11g (54 MBPS), but the Airport Extreme cards don't support their high-bandwidth mode. Of course, they are also not inter-company compatible, AFAIK. (That is, the ones from D-Link and Linksys don't play super-high-speed with each other either.)

thomasp said:

Thanks for the replies.

I'm having some problems setting up my PB to recognise my wireless router, but I had identical problems when I set up other wireless kit in the same room - the router has a very weak signal, and I am quite a way away from it.

Click to expand...

If you go closer to the router can you connect to it?

If you can I would suggest getting a utility from VersionTracker called
AP Grapher. It measures the strength of Airport signals.

As long as you are logged into your network - stay close to basestation to connect and then go for a walk to see where the signal drops.

802.11 is a funny thing - if I move my Airport Extreme 20 cm or rotate my PowerBook, I lose some signal 😕


aussie_geek