Urgent Airport Help!

[Snimo]

Hi Guys,

I'm going out to the apple shop soon so i wanted to know something.

I recently purchased a new airport Express, and i have it hooked up like this:

Sky Internet Router (100mbps) connected by cat 5e to aiport express and the output of the airport express is going into my mac again at 100mbps.

I want to know if i should swap my new aiport express for an extreme, as i wanted to use gigabit ethernet for my mac, would this be possible as the WAN socket coming into my airplay is capped at 100mbps by the sky internet router?

Cause i was thinking if i had my mac linked to the extreme at gigabit speeds then airplaying to the atv wirelessly might improve, as the airport is communicating with my mac on gigabit speeds?

Is this right? would it improve? or would the fact the WAN port going into the express is only 100mbps mean it would make no difference.

Hope this makes sense

 

[Snimo]

So to clarify I just want to know whether I should swap the express for an extreme?

Would the gigabit link between my mac and the airport be better even though my sky router only gives a100mbps speed into the airport

 

[Weaselboy]

So to clarify I just want to know whether I should swap the express for an extreme?

Would the gigabit link between my mac and the airport be better even though my sky router only gives a100mbps speed into the airport

You are on the right track with your train of thought, but unfortunately the specs are not on your side. The wired ethernet port in the AppleTV is only 100BASE-T, so adding a faster wired connection between the Mac and the AppleTV through the Airport Extreme upgrade would not help you at all.

 

[nephron8]

But it can help via wifi n spec.

 

[colshine]

Are you currently having issues streaming to your ATV from your Mac? If so, then a wired connection may help.

 

[Chimaera]

Highly unlikely that LAN speed between APE and your Mac is the bottleneck.

As a general point of experience if something is connected wirelessly and is seeing less than ideal performance my first suspect is *always* the wireless connection - its very prone to interference from other sources electromagnetic radiation and also walls and so on.

What are you using to provide wireless connectivity? The Sky router/modem or the APE? Some things to think of immediately leap out at me

If both WiFi's are active they could be using overlapping channels and conflicting.

The APE is reportedly not got the best wifi range if you're using only that and from that point of view you *might* see an improvement moving to AEBS as its got a much more powerful WLAN transmitter.

If you've got the sky router providing wireless to the ATV and then a wired connection to the APE, which then has a wired connection to the Mac then you'll end up with the Mac getting NATted twice (once by sky, once by the APE) - I would guess though the ATV wouldn't be able to see the Mac at all in this scenario though.

I'd start by doing a wired test to the ATV - get it on a hardware connection and see if whatever problem you're experiencing is improved. If it does - the your issue is likely with wireless connectivity and I'd start there.

 

[noteple]

Atv will benefit from WiFi N speeds on the extreme. Range might improve also.

Buy it, if it doesn't help just return it.