[sylwester]

I have a ibook (os9) w/ an airport card running on an airport extreme base station. I have a problem with file sharing over the network with one g4 (os9) on ethernet. We also have an old airport base station elsewhere in the office and when connected to this, the ibook communicates fine with said g4. The ibook does not have the same file sharing difficulties with other ethernet machines in the office through the airport extreme hub. The symptoms are; really really slow file transfer rate, and applications that use a database from said g4 generally freeze, fail to force quit and ultimately crash the computer.

[aaanorton]

This has been covered oodles of times here, most notably in the thread right next to yours when you posted this, from today.
You've probably got 2 subnets going. Config your ABSes so that only the first one distributes IPs.

[sylwester]

well I've tried many a many a many combinations of the suggested solutions.
currently both of the apbs have static ip addresses with the same subnet only the last two numbers are different. this is the case with every machine in the office. it doesn't seem to make a difference weather or not one or the other airport is assigning ips or neither, as is the case currently. I must be missing something. I have yet to get the problem to occur with the apbs, it is only happening on the apebs. I think i may try a hammer and a couple nails.