how fast does your airport network go? (airport sucks)

[brad.c]

First time I set up an airport network, it was in an office building. I'm sure you won't be surprised that in many locations I could not get a signal even from 3 feet away. Now I have it in my house, and have not had any serious speed issues. Range issues yes. Oh my God, yes. But inside that range, ther is no noticeable lags in speed.

My old company paid for the networking in my house, and I chose an Airport Extreme and Airport Express combo ONLY so I could use Airtunes.

Last week, I was watching a 720p Quicktime movie streamed from the server in my basement to my laptop. I usually have no lags or other problems, but all at once it was like the days of dial-up internet. Turns out my wife had the microwave going a floor away, which screwed the pooch. Meh, would have happened with a Linksys, I'm sure.

 

[plunar]

now this is strange. ping the cable modem on an ethernet cable, and i get around 6ms. ping the airport while it's disconnected, get around 4ms. plug the cable to the airport, airport ping falls to the high 100s. still, nothing gets anywhere near the 1.1 you mentioned.

 

[aristobrat]

Can you install iStumbler and see what it shows for what your MacBook detects around it? It's a quick download.

 

[SilentPanda]

It's a quick download.

Not with his connection...

 

[plunar]

so what i'm supposed to be looking at on istumbler?

 

[aristobrat]

Noise, what channel it's on, how many other people are on that channel. A screenshot would be cool to see, .. it'd show us how crazy around your place WiFi is. In Manhattan, I'd imagine it's crowded.

This is what my area looks like:

 

[plunar]

mine is the highlighted one.

 

[yellow]

Tried changing your channel to something unused?

There appears to be quite a bit of noise there.

 

[SilentPanda]

mine is the highlighted one.

I thought my apartment was bad with like 10 or so (if I walk to all corners of my apartment... more realistically it's 3-4)

 

[plunar]

why is the "signal" on everything in 65k range???

 

[plunar]

you'll notice earlier i had my channel set to 1.

changing the channel doesn't appear to have any effect.

 

[yellow]

Hrm... I downloaded the latest version and see the same thing, I wonder if it's a bug.

 

[vashim66]

leave your multicast rate to whatever the default is if you changed it.

 

[Reflow]

I would change it to channel 1 or 2. Most wireless boxes are peset to 6 or 11.

 

[Reflow]

mine is the highlighted one.

If you want you can buy an airmagnet that can blocks other people’s wireless devices on you side. But they are expensive

 

[aristobrat]

That's crap that you can't see the noise value. Argh.

You shouldn't have that much latency in your ping values. That's just crazy for it to take that long for a packet to leave your computer and hit the Express.

I wonder if Airstatz would show you if you're picking up any noise from something near you (but not in your living space):

 

[plunar]

geez.... my pie is about 90% green. this makes more questions...

 

[mkrishnan]

No, I still think interference has nothing to do with it. What you said about your ping times with the disconnected AE say everything. Those 4-6 ms ping times are fine -- there's nothing wrong with them. We need to figure out what makes that ping time climb up into the 200s when you have the router and the AE connected....

 

[plunar]

With no ethernet cable attached. weird... after a reset, it runs great, but it seems to taper off after a few minutes, regardless of whether it's connected to the cable modem or not. old one is the same way.

Ping has started ...

PING 10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=228.935 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=46.504 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=134.339 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=93.202 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=116.917 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=409.805 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=138.329 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=399.945 ms

--- 10.0.1.1 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 20% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 46.504/195.997/409.805/129.754 ms

 

[aristobrat]

The only thing unusual in this situation (IMO) is the number of other wireless networks around.

I can't think of anything else other than interference that would cause packet-loss and latency between a computer and a WiFi router that's only a few feet away.

Short of clicking the WiFi icon on the Mac and enabling the "Use Interference Robustness" option (and/or enabling that feature on the Airport Express as well), I don't know what else there is to do.

Maybe a different brand model of router (Linksys?) would perform better in this environment.

 

[bericd]

mine is the highlighted one.

I note that your base station is open - could other people be attached and hogging your bandwidth?

Try turning encryption on.

 

[SilentPanda]

I note that your base station is open - could other people be attached and hogging your bandwidth?

Try turning encryption on.

It's open because he had just reset it to the defaults.

 

[bericd]

It's open because he had just reset it to the defaults.

Sorry :-(

 

[plunar]

well this evening pings were coming in at over 1000ms on average and holding. even reseting isn't helping any longer.

i give up. the new ae's going back. maybe i'll ebay the other.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Very odd indeed. So to recap:

When you plug directly into the cable modem, you get good speed an ping times.

When you connect to the base station, but the base station is *NOT* connected to the cable modem, you get decent ping times to the base station.

When you plug the base station into the cable modem, your ping times and download speed drops to crap.

Is this correct?

If so, it sounds like maybe the cable modem has your computer's MAC address registered to it, and is causing problems when it sees another MAC address. (The Ethernet serial number referred to as 'MAC', not the computer called 'Mac'.) Try turning your cable modem off, letting it sit off for two minutes, then plugging it back in (while connected to the base station.) If that doesn't do it, then the cable company itself may have your MAC logged, and might, indeed, be doing some 'we don't like routers' tricks. The solution for that is to tell your router to clone your computer's MAC address. Unfortunately, Apple's AirPort line doesn't support this.