Poor signal strength on Airport network

[skball123]

So this is my network set up:

A) Cable Modem connected to ethernet cord to new Airport Extreme Base Station.
B) Three Airport Expresses located around my house set on extending the network.

The airport extreme station is in the master bedroom and the room I am in is approx. 15-25ft away (thru a wall of course).

I ran iStumbler and am getting ~42% signal and 23% noise from the main airport extreme. I am getting about 49% from one airport express with ~15% noise, ~42%/17%, and ~45%/15% from the last. Sometimes they can drop as low as 35% signal... This is not prime...

Now, I do get better signal during the day, so other networks could be interfering. I have checked local networks and their respective channels, and moved mine to an all time random number of 3. The other networks are mainly on channels 6, 8, and 11. Before I moved my network to 3, it was on channel 11. I get the same signal/noise before and after the channel move.

Finally, to finish off the description... This current computer is located on the third floor. The main airport extreme is located on the third floor as well, with a relay airport express right outside the door of the master bedroom. It relays to the other 2 airport expresses. (it is also a regular airport express).

Currently, all Airports are set at a Multicast rate of 2mbps.

So, after all that... Can anyone help me out?

Thanks so much!

 

[kntgsp]

Is it an old house? Sometimes they have really thick walls that kill wireless.

Also, make sure your computer has the latest wireless device drivers. That's probably one of the top 3 solutions to this kind of problem. It was for my Belkin router. In addition to that make sure the firmware/software for the base stations is up to date. Not sure if Apple released any firmware updates for those (have a Belkin router myself)

I get differing levels of throughput on the same wireless router in the same location of the house depending on which Mac I use. On an Air, I have probably 500-800KBps (KB, not bits) and on a MBP 15" 08 unibody I had 1.1 MBps (again bytes not bits) while in the same location. That's probably due to a difference in antenna size between the two.

But in terms of house, Floors are harder to go through than walls, at least with the way most houses are built here. And if there are multiple different networks in the same range as you, that would account for a lot of the noise. There's only so much you can do in that situation.