New N Airport Extreme slowdown with G connections in UK?

[netdog]

Hi,

I have a new Airport Extreme N base station and C2D iMac so I am generally connecting at N speeds, which are halved in the UK and hence only 2.5x faster as opposed to 5x faster.

My question is this ... I have a Wifi G HP laser printer. Given that my times are already halved, will having this printer simply turned on and ready to receive slow down my network significantly? I want to put my mass storage drives on my Extreme with AirDrive, so I do want the speeds as high as possible as networked drives are a little slow anyway.

Would I get a significant boost in speed if I hung the laser off of another N router?

Also, is there any way to hack my router to remove the UK speed restrictions? If I got a bios update from someone in the USA?

 

[rogersmj]

If you connect any G device to your N wireless network, the whole thing will slow down to N. I suggest you take another wireless G router and connect it to your main one as a non-DHCP access point, so your printer can connect to that one and still join up with the rest of your network. That way, your N router can remain at N speeds.

 

[skunk]

Also, is there any way to hack my router to remove the UK speed restrictions? If I got a bios update from someone in the USA?

No hacking required. Select the BS in AP Utility, select Base Station>Manual Setup>Wireless>Wireless Options, and select Ireland as the Region. Voilà, no restrictions apply.

Perhaps not 100% in compliance with UK law, but do you really care? After all, perhaps you found it was set to Ireland by default. Mine was.

 

[netdog]

That is fantastic (changing the setting to Ireland). How can I setup the internal AirPort in my iMac in the same way?

 

[skunk]

Setting up the Mac as a Software Base Station ought to give the option, but if you go to System Prefs>Sharing>Internet>Airport Options, it doesn't. Maybe it only works passively, or perhaps you should simply try selecting Channel 10 or lower, as the only difference between European and US models appears to be that there are only 10 available channels in the US, as opposed to 13 over here, or so I have heard, and the default channel selected here is 13.

 

[netdog]

My Basestation was already set to Ireland (from the factory!).

Also, while I am here, what about the multi-casting rate? That was set to 2Mbps, and can be set to 5.5 and 11 Mbps as well. Ideas?

Also, the WPA Group key timeout?!? Currently set to 1 hour.

 

[iW00t]

Also, while I am here, what about the multi-casting rate? That was set to 2Mbps, and can be set to 5.5 and 11 Mbps as well. Ideas?

Also, the WPA Group key timeout?!? Currently set to 1 hour.

These are the same questions that I'm curious to know more about too.