[B_2]

Hi everyone

Does anyone know how the wireless range of the original Airport card compares to that offered by the Airport Extreme Card?


Thanks

[larkost]

The antennas they are hooked up to are the biggest differentiating factor. That being said, the G products (extreme) are generally better, especially if you are talking about for the same throughput since the G series has that much further to fall.

[amazing]

Way back when AE first came out, MacWorld magazine had a comparison. I vaguely seem to recall that 11b had the edge, but the most striking finding was that 11g dropped off faster than 11b. To put it another way, the throughput of the 2 cards degraded less for 11b as you got farther away. My personal experience with Cisco Aironet 350 11b and Buffalo Airstation 11g wireless pc-cards in a Ti-400 (the internal 11b airport card was worthless, as far as range goes) under Tiger and Panther was that they were roughly equivalent, with a slight edge to the Aironet. In other words, when I switched between cards and measured the connection with stumbler software, the numbers were ever so slightly better for 11b.

That said, your question is a little strange since you can't replace an internal airport card with an AE card? Unless you're wondering about PMCIA cards? Perhaps if you rephrased your question, you'd get a more specific answer?

[ghporter]

Let's make sure everyone knows one thing: "AirPort" is Apple's brand name for 802.11 wireless equipment.

AirPort is 802.11b, while AirPort Extreme is 802.11g. This equates to 11Mbps WiFi and 54Mbps WiFi respectively. D-Link (for example) makes 802.11g equipment that interoperates with Apple's AirPort Extreme equipment; they DO NOT make AirPort Extreme products. Don't confuse Apple's product line brand names with the standards they support.