AE questions, about a list of items:) long, but need the assistance

[j2048b]

Whats up everyone!!

i recently picked up an Airport extreme base station(new model) and i also have the older cone shaped airport extreme as well.

i have verizon dsl and a westell 327 w from them for the dsl

i am planning on hooking up these components: (all windows based for now!

2 ps3's (wireless)1 upstairs, 1 downstairs
1 dell desktop windows xp (wired directly not wirelessly)
1 vista laptop (wireless)
1 dell inspiron 6000 laptop XP (wireless)
1 Wii- nintendo (wireless)
1 printer
1-2 harddrives

I want to have as little lag as possible due to streaming to ps3's, Wii, and laptops. My main desktop is upstairs so it will be wired. and 1 ps3 will be upstairs wireless

the rest is down stairs.

my questions:

which modem should i use for the wired desktop pc? the new wireless with ethernet plugs, or the main dsl from verizon?

would it be beneficial for me to set up either one of the AE's as either a remote or relay downstairs to prevent lag on the wireless network and to give my wireless a bit of a boost?

if it would be beneficial which one would be better to be downstairs/ or hooked up through my dsl router the square one or older cone shaped one?

if i hook up a few usb hard drives will there be lag due to to many drives connected on the network?

do i actually have to set up bonjour on each computer?

how does that work for the ps3's? Do i just set them up manually?


I know its a lot but i am new (again) to the mac side of things!!

cant wait to upgrade to a mac desktop though, if i ever get the money!!
Thanks

J2048b

 

[j2048b]

i know its long and very in depth but is there any help?

 

[frankblundt]

I'd probably go with the new Airport as the main one. It'll have better range and throughput than the old one, but it'll depend a bit on what wireless cards the pCs are using to connect to it.

afaik there are few wireless routers which will allow you to combine them to extend a network (the NetGear one I used to have certainly wouldn't) - they'll let you create a subnet, but that's not much use for most people - but Airport does (or at least the current ones do, less sure about the old models)

If the old airport is an 'a/b' wireless, it's probably going to slow up the network rather than add anything useful. The new Airports are 'n' and will cope happily enough with 'g' devices using it, but seem to slow dramatically if you add any 'a/b' devices to the network (including other routers).

As for which is best to connect the wired one to, I'd imagine that the main traffic is going to be between the wired and the other wireless devices, so connecting it directly to the Airport would make the most sense. It means it has to go through the Airport to the Verizon router to get to the outside, but the bottleneck there will be the speed of the internet connection anyway, not the speed of the connection between the two routers.

The more wireless devices on the network, the slower the throughput when they're all using it , and depending on the amount of interference, even when they're just connected (but not actually transferring data) because the antennae will be attempting to optimise strength in multiple directions.

That'll do for starters. Maybe someone who knows what they're talking about will respond now to correct me

 

[j2048b]

cool, thanks for the advice, i will probably just go with the newer n model because your right" i dont know if the older version is a/b or n?

plus the others over on apple said if i hook it all up with the older one as a remote, then it would lower my overall bandwidth!!

so just the flat one for me thanks!!