[larrinski]

I currently have my network set up that cable goes to my cable modem in the living room and from there to my Airport base station which then connects to my stereo in the living room for Airtunes. In my office I have my imac wireless to the airport and my laptop also wireless from anywhere in the house(of course). My download speed seems a little slow, so I want to hook up my imac to my cable modem directly in the office. From there I need help with how to get my network configured. I still want airport connected to my stereo for airtunes. How do I get my laptop on the net if the Airport base station is not hooked up to the cable modem? Do I use the internet sharing and select airport to computer using airport? And will this new wireless connection between my imac and my powerbook be encrypted like my airport was (WPA)? Will the imac still send the music via airport to my stereo even if the airport station is not connected to the network? I know some of these questions are simple, so I thank you in advance for you patience... Can I connect to the internet with my powerbook through the airport to the imac and then out?

[Gossamer]

It would seem like the easiest solution would be to get a wireless/wired router and hook it up to your cable modem, that way your router takes the assigned IP address from your ISP and distributes new IP addresses to all of your machines. Then you can hook up both the airport base station and the iMac to that router. I haven't used AirTunes so I can't answer your question, but I assume it would be easy to do once you get the new connections made, Macs have a tendency to 'just work.'
You mention that your download speed seems slow on the iMac. Do you have solid numbers, or is it a 'feels like' thing? The wireless 'g' standard offers about 54Mbps speeds. Most internet connections are less than 10Mbps, so I don't think having your iMac on wireless would make a difference unless you were copying files between machines wirelessly. In that case, having the iMac connected to a 100Mbps ethernet line would be advantageous.

[larrinski]

Thanks for the advice. I didn't know that the airport offered such fast transfer rates! I had called my ISP and I cap out at 5mbps. I have been getting about 3mbps when I do speedtests through them. It is a little slower than usual. I figured (incorrectly now I guess) that if my main computer was wired, I would get faster transfer rates to it. If the airport transfers at 54mbps, that won't be my bottleneck...

I had noticed when I tried to stream the WWDC keynote that it sucked! I tried to stream on my powerbook and intel imac. Both couldn't stream more than a few seconds before it got choppy or stopped.

I won't bother with any new configuration. When I need to transfer large files between the computers, I use firewire anyway. Thanks for the help!

[Gossamer]

You could always try plugging your iMac directly into your cable modem for a little bit to run a speed test, just to see if the speeds were any better. And the speed of the keynote sucked for everyone, since pretty much everyone was trying to download it at once

[larrinski]

Ya, I did think that may be the case with the keynote. I think that because it was so slow, it got me to start testing my broadband speed. Once I realized that I wasn't getting close to my 5mbps, and I called my ISP, they were fast to start looking at my wireless as the problem...

I have noticed that some of my friends that run Windows(sad but true)do seem to get snappier flash animations on the same sites I frequent. Even with running both computers on the same network.That adds to the perceived slower speeds I am sure!

I will plug my powerbook into the cable modem and run a test, then try it via Airport to see if it differs. After your comments above, I am starting to doubt that though. It could "never" be my ISP...