I wish to setup a wireless home network with the AirPort Extreme Base Station at the heart of it as follows:
- AEBS with external USB HD for centralised file sharing located upstairs at a roughly central location in the house.
- Mac Pro located upstairs connected to AEBS via ethernet cable.
- G5 PowerMac located downstairs connected to AEBS wirelessly.
- MBP connected to AEBS wirelessly, will be mainly used upstairs but sometimes in back garden (my existing D-Link WRT54G wireless router gives my laptop PC an acceptable level of signal in my garden so I'm assuming the AEBS will also do this?).
I also wish to purchase an AirPort Express Base Station to stream iTunes to my hifi. I'd like to do this using the MBP when I'm inside the house to stream music to the AirPort Express from the USB HD connected to the Extreme base station. Is this actually possible?
As the MBP will be capable of 5GHz 'n' protocols, I was going to purchase the latest gen AEBS to take advantage of this. I've also found an AE card for my G5 which apparently supports both 'b', 'g' and 'n' protocols, so I should hopefully be able to have the whole network running on 'n' at 5GHz.
However I've just read a thread on the Support section of the Apple site describing problems users are experiencing with the reliability of the 'n' 5GHz transfer speeds on the latest gen Extreme base station, and also problems with streaming AirTunes at this frequency. To improve the AirTunes streaming users have had to change down to 2.4GHz, which apparently forces the protocol down from 'n' to 'g' on the latest gen of Extreme, resulting in an unacceptable level of reduction. These users have therefore reverted to their previous gen of Extreme which does not support the 5GHz bandwidth and are much happier with the results.
I'm happy to admit that my knowledge of wireless networking is very basic, therefore I don't really understand the implications of the last paragraph I wrote, but I would appreciate hearing what other users experiences are with the latest gen of AEBS, especially those of you who have implemented a network similar to the one I have planned, to enable me to decide whether I should go with the latest gen or a previous gen.
- AEBS with external USB HD for centralised file sharing located upstairs at a roughly central location in the house.
- Mac Pro located upstairs connected to AEBS via ethernet cable.
- G5 PowerMac located downstairs connected to AEBS wirelessly.
- MBP connected to AEBS wirelessly, will be mainly used upstairs but sometimes in back garden (my existing D-Link WRT54G wireless router gives my laptop PC an acceptable level of signal in my garden so I'm assuming the AEBS will also do this?).
I also wish to purchase an AirPort Express Base Station to stream iTunes to my hifi. I'd like to do this using the MBP when I'm inside the house to stream music to the AirPort Express from the USB HD connected to the Extreme base station. Is this actually possible?
As the MBP will be capable of 5GHz 'n' protocols, I was going to purchase the latest gen AEBS to take advantage of this. I've also found an AE card for my G5 which apparently supports both 'b', 'g' and 'n' protocols, so I should hopefully be able to have the whole network running on 'n' at 5GHz.
However I've just read a thread on the Support section of the Apple site describing problems users are experiencing with the reliability of the 'n' 5GHz transfer speeds on the latest gen Extreme base station, and also problems with streaming AirTunes at this frequency. To improve the AirTunes streaming users have had to change down to 2.4GHz, which apparently forces the protocol down from 'n' to 'g' on the latest gen of Extreme, resulting in an unacceptable level of reduction. These users have therefore reverted to their previous gen of Extreme which does not support the 5GHz bandwidth and are much happier with the results.
I'm happy to admit that my knowledge of wireless networking is very basic, therefore I don't really understand the implications of the last paragraph I wrote, but I would appreciate hearing what other users experiences are with the latest gen of AEBS, especially those of you who have implemented a network similar to the one I have planned, to enable me to decide whether I should go with the latest gen or a previous gen.