Is an AirPort Extreme Base Station the solution to my problems?

Gerard_Smith

I'm with Eircom and am currently using the wireless router(Netopia) that Eircom provided me for my home wireless network. I got my Intel C2D iMac in October and almost immediately started to suffer mysterious network dropouts. It would be going along fine when all of a sudden all communication between the Mac the router would just stop. According to the Mac I was still connected, the signal strength never seemed to drop below 5 bars but the network connection just stopped. It would almost always come back in about a minute but sometimes it required a restart to regain connection and even then its sometimes failed to detect my network on restart.

I got so sick of this I started using a Netopia USB wireless card I also got from Eircom and with that I've had not network problems. Connection has been strong and fast. It has however caused some odd spotlight behaviour and a few other minor bugs.

The recent update from apple has not fixed the Airport problem but it has how increased the rate of recovery from the dropouts. As I said, before it would take about a minute, now only about 10 seconds. Better but still too annoying to be usable. So its back to using the USB card. But I don't want to use the USB card, its causing bugs and I want that USB port back.

So now I ask the question, is an AirPort Extreme Base Station the solution to my problems. Am I liable to get better connection with the Mac internal card it I use one? Every wireless device in my house is connected to the Netopia router so I know how poor its range can be when not connecting to a Netopia card. Might that be the problem?

Also if I did get an AirPort Extreme Base Station how on earth would I go about setting it up, because I honestly have no idea. How hard would it be to get my other wireless devices (Xbox 360, Wii) connected to it?

I could use some advice on this.

Sad Professor

There's a problem with poor Airport reception/drop outs, etc on the C2D macs, not everyone seems to have it but there's plenty of people complaining about it over at the Apple discussion boards. I have a C2D iMac I got in November and my Airport signal is rarely ever full even though the Airport Base Station is only 2 feet away. I suspect it's a problem with OSX which will have to be fixed in 10.4.9, which will be the final update to Tiger. It will hopefully be released shortly. In the meantime I've had no choice but to connect directly to my router.

Gerard_Smith

Thanks

Any idea on the time frame of 10.4.9s release?

Sad Professor

I'm not sure tbh. Last I heard it sounded close to finished and it has been seeded to developers. So soon hopefully. But technically it could arrive anytime before Leopard.

Gerard_Smith

Just in case I ever do need to get an AirPort Extreme Base Station could someone please talk me through how on earth you would set one up?

Sad Professor

There's not much to it. There's an Apple Airport Assistant that guides you through it all. If you try and add it to an existing wireless network as a relay/remote station it can be a bit of a pain to set up though. I have two airports, an extreme here and an express in another room. I don't have a wireless xbox 360 or Wii but I'd doubt there'd be any trouble. I just connect my original xbox directly to the base station.

An Airport station probably won't make any difference to the wireless problem you're currently having though.

Gerard_Smith

Thanks.