Airport Extreme - dual band questions

[netnothing]

Just picked up a refurb Airport Extreme Dual band (current generation). Have a few questions for some networking gurus:

1) If it's setup normally, where Radio Mode is Auto and Radio Channel is auto, does that mean that it's running 2 networks (one on 5GHz and one on 2.4GHz) under the same SSID?

If so, then I'm guessing clients will auto choose which network (both band and speed to use)?

2) b/g clients only operate on the 2.4GHz spectrum correct?
3) N clients work on both? but need the 5GHz for full speeds?
4) Is there any benefit to using the advanced option to give the N network it's own name?

5) With a dual network, do G clients slow down N clients? Or will the G stick on one band and N on the other?

6) Finally, can anyone explain what the screenshot for Radio Mode means? Are the values on the left one radio and the values on the right the other radio?

Thanks for any help!

-Kevin

 

[drambuie]

I've been trying to figure out this stuff, myself.

Here's a direct quote from the "Designing Airport Networks" manual:

"Choosing the Radio Mode

Choose “802.11n (802.11b/g compatible)” from the Radio Mode pop-up menu if computers with 802.11n, 802.11g, or 802.11b wireless cards will join the network. Each client computer will connect to the network and transmit network traffic at the highest possible speed.

Choose “802.11n only (2.4 GHz)” if only computers with 802.11n compatible wireless cards will join the network in the 2.4 GHz frequency range.

Choose “802.11n (802.11a compatible)” if computers with 802.11n and 802.11a wireless cards will join the network in the 5 GHz frequency range. Computers with 802.11g or 802.11b wireless cards will not be able to join this network.

Choose “802.11n only (5 GHz)” if computers with 802.11n wireless cards will join the network. The transmission rate of the network will be at 802.11n speed. Computers with 802.11g, 802.11b, and 802.11a wireless cards will not be able to join this network.

Note: If you don’t want to use an 802.11n radio mode, hold down the Option key and chose a radio mode that doesn’t include 802.11n."

 

[netnothing]

Stumbled across this nice article that helps a bit:
http://db.tidbits.com/article/10125

-Kevin

 

[drambuie]

That helps a bit. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems that Airport's network list displays all detected networks whether you're on 5GHz or 2.4GHz. Is there any way to make it display 5GHz networks only?

It appears that MAC address filtering is negated by the default TC or AE network name. It displays the last 3 bytes of the WiFi MAC, and the first 3 bytes are known, as common to all Apple TCs and AEs - C8:CC:8B.

I have a mystery. I am networking my MBP with Windows PCs, and when I have the Windows workgroup name listed in the Airport WINS tab, Finder can't see the PC shares, or LAN'd printers, although I can force a connection by "Connect to". When I remove the workgroup name Finder displays the PCs and printers.