weak signal on airport extreme

[Foxer]

I brought home a new 12-inch powerbook yesterday and conencted it to my airport extreme network. Lo and behold, the signal fluctuated from as low as one "wave" on the icon bar to as much as 2/3 of the bars - it never maxed out at the "full signal." I used to have a regular airport set-up in the same location and was able to get a full-strength signal anywhere in my house. Does anyone else have an airport extreme, and if so, are you seeing a similar signal pattern. Could it be climactic in some way? Anyway to boost the base station's signal? Also, does the signal strength affect the rate of data transmission - i.e., is a weak signal slower than a strong one?

 

[SBG88]

I don't have extreme, but, Dr.Bott has an antenna for extreme.

 

[conceptdev]

I have an airport extreme base station and a TiBook with old airport. The extreme station works identically to my old Linksys wifi router.

That said I recall reading somewhere that the range for 802.11g was significantly smaller than 802.11b. If you modify the settings so the station only uses the "b" standard you might get a range boost.

 

[jethroted]

The new standard is only faster. It has a shorter range than the old airport though. It seems stupid that they would make a standard that took such a step backward, but they did.

 

[SBG88]

80211b & g both operate at the 2.4 ghz frequency range. G uses a different radio technology to increase the bandwidth.

G does not have a shorter range. It has less non-overlapping channels (3) than B (8). It exists with b not around it.