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swimfan · Oct 5, 2003, 11:16 AM

here's my situation, hope someone can help.

i have a cable modem going into a netgear 4 port router. an xbox and two pc's and an airport extreme base station are hardwired to the 4 ports. the airport is set up as a bridge.

after spending all day yesterday finding the once sweet spot in my whole house where the AEBS gives me full coverage, i still have problems. using the airport grapher utility from versiontracker.com, it shows that i completely lose service every few seconds even when i have 3 bars of signal. the graph shows these very short spurts that happen every few seconds where i completely lose my signal. aside from taking apart my base station (don't have the antenna model) and installing an external antenna, what are my options? i've been carefull not to place the AEBS around anything that might cause interference and the lowest my signal ever gets is two bars, but when that happens, I can't surf the internet.

aaanorton · Oct 5, 2003, 12:03 PM

Just curious, which model ABS do you have? How long have you had it?
I've read nothing but bad stuff about those ext antennas. I've also never owned an ABS, but I have tried a few different wireless routers. Namely, I've had 2 different Asante models. While they worked well, handled Appletalk perfectly and never gave me any problems, I did have a dead spot or two at the far end of the house. I recently picked up a Netgear MR814 from buy.com. I see that today it's going for $43, which is actually the MOST I've seen it for lately, by about 5 bucks. But clearly this is an awesome price. Now I have full signal most of the time throughout the house (sometimes I'll lose a bar temporarily in the previously-dead-spot rooms). I'd say that if you're gonna buy something, try this first, since it's so cheap, Plus, this would replace your old router AND ABS. Nothing like one less little box lying around...

swimfan · Oct 5, 2003, 12:22 PM

i own an airport extreme base station and i've had it for about 7 months. the AEBS should act the same way as the netgear you suggested except the AEBS is 802.11g 54mbps and the netgear is 802.11b 11mbps. i originally had it set up the way you suggested, but the AEBS would always "crash." not sure what i has doing wrong, but i always had to unplug it and restart it to get the internet working again. so, i just reconfigured everything yesterday to use an old netgear router i already had and then the airport extreme base station as a bridge to the netgear router.

aaanorton · Oct 5, 2003, 01:11 PM

What I mean is that the Netgear MR814 has GREAT reception. The A(E)BSes have never been known to be strong is this regard. I realize that the AEBS is .11g, but are you really using this? Even .11b is MUCH faster than your internet connection, so this will not be affected at all. And if you have poor reception, the AEBS steps down to .11b anyway.
I don't get what you mean by "i originally had it set up the way you suggested...". I suggested a new set-up without the AEBS at all, so how could you have tried this?

swimfan · Oct 5, 2003, 02:07 PM

what i mean by that is: i originally had the cable modem going directly into the AEBS and using the AEBS as the wireless router. now, it is being used as a bridge.

aaanorton · Oct 5, 2003, 04:34 PM

Originally posted by swimfan:
what i mean by that is: i originally had the cable modem going directly into the AEBS and using the AEBS as the wireless router. now, it is being used as a bridge.

OK, but but I never suggested that... I recommend trying the Netgear MR814, instead of an external antenna.