Airport Network Performance terrible!

[lokinvar]

HI Guys,
Its taken me nearly a week but yesterday i finally managed to achieve my home network setup. We have the following:
1 x first ed MBP dualcore and 1 x powerbook

The home network: o2 homebroadband running as a bridged modem into my airport extreme (gigabit) in WDS mode with one philips powered usb harddrive attached via a belkin hub (currently by itself). In addition there is a airport express configured as a remote WDS station which sends music further down the house.
The express and extreme are both green lit and cant be more than 15 metres from each other with one wall seperating them.

It was a huge relief to finally get this working but i have to say it is a little dissappointing. I use it to provide internet to both laptops and to create a new itunes library based at the house with all the music on the netwrok drive. I set this up last night, put all the music on the usb drive and then in itunes added the mother folder to the library and it has been processing for nearly 12 hours now. When i check activity monitor it shows the network activity peaking at 1.0mps. Can this be right? Yesterday it was at 435kbs until i read ann article about interference and moved the base station away from the metal of the tv and amps etc, it nearly doubled in throughput but still seems rubbish.

Is this all i can expecct? Any helpful suggestions very welcome.
Many thanks.

[lokinvar]

Forgot to include extreme firmware is now 7.3.2 and express 6.3

The hardrive would keep falling off the system when not in use for an extended period (10 mins or more!). Its the most stable firnware i have used yet.
Any thoughts there appreciated too.

[lokinvar]

bump..

[rkdiddy]

Please don't bump your posts...it's not looked at very highly around these parts.

It sounds like you have a few potential bottlenecks in your system (three hand offs and a usb switch).

As far as your question, you may want to consider changing the channels that your AEBS is operating on. It is possible you are getting a lot of cross interference. Also make sure Internet Robustness is switched off - that will bring down the performance. Lastly, what band are you connected 2.4 or 5ghz? I know if I connect on the 5ghz band, I get smoking speeds in the same room and a few feet from it. After that my 2.4ghz band performs better.

As far as the iTunes processing I have about 2k songs and it took a few hours (that was plugged in) - so while I think it sounds like yours is slower than normal - I don't think it is that far off.

I will check my transfer rate when I get home.

Cheers.

[fehhkk]

What channel are you using? If you're using Channel 11, then that's most likely the cause of your problems. Try changing the 2.4GHz channel manually into something that your neighbors are not using. I had that problem with AEBS myself.

[lokinvar]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, i'll try the channels.