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Airport Extreme and thick Brick/Concrete Walls

D

dingdongbubble

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 1, 2007
538
0
Hello Everyone!

My house has thick concrete/brick walls (dont know exactly) and I was wondering if the Airport Extreme with its 802.11n spec will be able to reach everywhere in my house. My current router is a Siemens Speedstream 802.11g. As far as I know its pretty crappy and unreliable. Its signal hardly goes through one wall and at two walls, sometimes it detects the network and connects for a few moments.

I can measure and tell you how thick my walls are and how far away would the farthest point be from the router.
 
dingdongbubble said:
Hello Everyone!

My house has thick concrete/brick walls (dont know exactly) and I was wondering if the Airport Extreme with its 802.11n spec will be able to reach everywhere in my house. My current router is a Siemens Speedstream 802.11g. As far as I know its pretty crappy and unreliable. Its signal hardly goes through one wall and at two walls, sometimes it detects the network and connects for a few moments.

I can measure and tell you how thick my walls are and how far away would the farthest point be from the router.
Click to expand...

The Draft-N spec goes further and faster, 5X faster and further than 802.11g. I think it will be better, but I don't know how much better.
 
dingdongbubble said:
Hello Everyone!

My house has thick concrete/brick walls (dont know exactly) and I was wondering if the Airport Extreme with its 802.11n spec will be able to reach everywhere in my house. My current router is a Siemens Speedstream 802.11g. As far as I know its pretty crappy and unreliable. Its signal hardly goes through one wall and at two walls, sometimes it detects the network and connects for a few moments.

I can measure and tell you how thick my walls are and how far away would the farthest point be from the router.
Click to expand...

N is supposed to get you twice the distance, at least if both the connecting device and router are N capable. However, if you use it in 5.8 GHz mode rather than 2.4 GHz mode (which gets you higher speeds), your distance will go down somewhat. That's due to the physical fact that (as a general rule) higher frequency signals degrade faster over distance.
 
Airport Extreme and thick Brick/Concrete Walls

I have the same setup at my house. I have 3 floors and all concrete in between. My router is on the top floor and I was able to get connection at the bottom floor. However, because i need hard wire connections, i have an airport express on each floor so that i can connect a hub to it for connections (print servers, xboxes, etc).

The Airport extreme does a pretty good job getting through the walls though.

I'm thinking about getting another Airport Extreme to be a network extender so that i can have wireless N speeds. Either that or wait for a new version of the Express to come out as N.
 
dingdongbubble said:
Hello Everyone!

My house has thick concrete/brick walls (dont know exactly) and I was wondering if the Airport Extreme with its 802.11n spec will be able to reach everywhere in my house. My current router is a Siemens Speedstream 802.11g. As far as I know its pretty crappy and unreliable. Its signal hardly goes through one wall and at two walls, sometimes it detects the network and connects for a few moments.

I can measure and tell you how thick my walls are and how far away would the farthest point be from the router.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it will. I have my AEBS on the top floor and I get signal in my back yard through double brick walls (took the cable guy an hour to drill through them). Should be OK. Good luck.
 
So I guess I will be safe in buying an Airport Extreme?

Is it normal for cheap ISP routers to perform like mine being able to get trhough only one wall hardly?

Does the Airport Extreme include a modem with it?

Why would you suggest an Airport Extreme over other routers?

Thanks
 
dingdongbubble said:
So I guess I will be safe in buying an Airport Extreme?

Is it normal for cheap ISP routers to perform like mine being able to get trhough only one wall hardly?

Does the Airport Extreme include a modem with it?

Why would you suggest an Airport Extreme over other routers?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I would suggest the Airport Extreme because from what I heard, it's the bestselling Draft-N router in the market right now.

There isn't a modem in the Airport Extreme.
 
dingdongbubble said:
So I guess I will be safe in buying an Airport Extreme?

Is it normal for cheap ISP routers to perform like mine being able to get trhough only one wall hardly?

Does the Airport Extreme include a modem with it?

Why would you suggest an Airport Extreme over other routers?

Thanks
Click to expand...


No modem. The AEBS is one of the highest quality routers out there right now. It has a USB port which will allow HD/Printer functioning on the network and it's connection distance is the best that I've seen in a router. It can also work as an extender which most routers cannot do. Most significantly, if you are connecting to a Mac it is the most reliable router that you can get.

I have had two D-Link and one Netgear router prior to this one (a new Gigabit AEBS) and I would never go back to anything other than Apple.

Good luck.
 
My current modem is INSIDE my router. So will this modem work with the AEBS? I also have another USB modem which was kinda crappy. It has a USB connection for connecting to the computer, Tel port, another port which looks the same with LINE written on it. So will this work with the AEBS? To use it I had to install some software or drivers or something form the CD included.
 
dingdongbubble said:
My current modem is INSIDE my router. So will this modem work with the AEBS? I also have another USB modem which was kinda crappy. It has a USB connection for connecting to the computer, Tel port, another port which looks the same with LINE written on it. So will this work with the AEBS? To use it I had to install some software or drivers or something form the CD included.
Click to expand...

Probably the best option would be to hook up the AEBS as a bridge your modem/router. Basically the modem/router would take care of distributing addresses to your network, being the internet gateway, etc, (this can be turned off in the AEBS) while the AEBS would handle the wireless LAN connection (probably easiest to turn off wireless completely in the modem/router, if possible).
 
I figure I'd revive this thread since I've had a completely different experience with the AEBS.

I tried connecting it and after a few attempts my Imac (new version) recognised it. However it couldn't connect to it. I moved the computer to an adjacent room and it connected but the connection was still extremely weak.

I'm in the loft conversion at the top of the house and the AEBS could not reach my room. Hence I had to move my computer.

Further, it turns out the my free Voyager DSL Modem that plusnet sent us actually has a better reach the AEBS. The Voyager gives me about 75% signal strength

I'll probably still keep the AEBS and extend its range with an airport express. I'm hoping that will give me 100%. If not at least I can return them to apple.

In a way I am pretty dissapointed with the performance of the AEBS but there isn't much you can do if you have bricks and mortar between you and it!

So it summary, yes the brick walls could be a problem.
Eddie

I
 
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