Airport Extreme Questions....

[afbuckeye]

So, I have looked all around the forums and haven't really found a for sure answer. I figured I would post and see what people say. I haven't really tried to set anything up yet and I basically want to know for future reference.

I understand that when you connect a device to the airport extreme that is not capable of the N speeds it will slow down the network. Is there any solution to get around this? Possibly using wireless and wired connections to another router? or using airport express? When you have, say, one cable connection coming in normally, is it possible to set up two different networks?

Just a bunch of questions and figured it would spark some discussion on a topic that I see as not being to clear. Thanks in advance.

 

[aristobrat]

On my Airport Extreme, if everything is 802.11n, the devices show a maximum connection rate of 300mbps.

If an 802.11g device joins the network, then the 802.11n devices show a maximum connection rate of 160mbps.

My roommates laptop and my Tivos are all 802.11g (with no easy way to upgrade to 802.11n), so I setup two networks (using my old 802.11g router, which was also an Airport Extreme).

The cable modem plugs into the WAN port of the 802.11n Extreme.
I have that Extreme set to a 5ghz 802.11n-only network.
I have a CAT5 cable running from one of that Extreme's 3 ports over to the *LAN* port on the old 802.11g Extreme.
I have that Extreme set to "bridge", which basically tells it not to assign IP addresses to devices that connect to it. (It lets the request pass back up to the 802.11n Extreme which does all of the DHCP).

The end result is you see two separate networks at my house (Geh Weg x.x), but they both will get you on the same 192.168.x.x network (so devices on either network can talk to each other just like if it was one network).

Hopefully that made sense. It's still early for me.