[chasg]

Hi All,

I've just replaced my generic not-so-great Belkin wifi hub (b and g) with a new Airport Base Station, in order to maximise distance and connection speed to my LAN for my C2D MacBook Pro.

Initial setup was quite simple (gotta like that new config app), but I'm looking to maximise throughput. My concerns were raised by reading a review at Macintouch which mentioned that having NAT turned on will really slow things down. I'm also wondering about encryption: will turning it off and using MAC address restrictions improve throughput?

I will admit to having some trouble with trying to turn off NAT. I had NAT turned off with my earlier router, DHCP was passed straight through the router from my broadband modem to any connected computers, but I'm afraid I need some help configuring my new basestation the same way (as an experiment I tried to set the Connection Sharing option to "bridge" and then to "distribute a range of IP addresses", but I obviously made an error somewhere as I just lost connectivity to the basestation with both options).

Just to be clear, I have a broadband modem that acts as a DHCP server, the modem is connected to a 10/100 switch and the Airport basestation is connected to the switch also.

I'd like any computer connected to the basestation to take DHCP commands from the modem (this has the dual advantage of preventing the need for NAT on the basestation, which I understand is a bottleneck, and of keeping all computers on the LAN in a certain IP address range, which I find useful for inter-connectivity).

Does anyone have any tips? (a read through what I thought were the relevant threads hasn't gleaned an answer, I'm afraid).

Thanks in advance,

Chas

[ghporter]

I don't see how NAT can slow things down drastically on a super-fast router when it is imperceptible on an ancient and glacially slow router. However, you turn off NAT by unchecking the "Share a single IP address" box in the Networking tab of the AirPort Admin Utility. This effectively turns your expensive, fast router into ONLY an access point, though. Maybe you should look at your network's configuration; having the APn AFTER your 10/100 switch is probably unnecessary since it has its own 4-port switch built in. And I wouldn't worry about "slowdowns" that I haven't really encountered, if I were you. Your "N" network should pretty much fly compared to everything you've used in the past-if it doesn't seem a whole lot faster than your G network, then you may have a problem that needs attention.

[chasg]

Thanks for replying. The review I refer to is here:

Review: AirPort Extreme 802.11n

and if you scroll down to "AirPort Extreme's Achilles' Heel" (about 30 lines), you can read what concerns me.

And having the APn after my switch is only because it was easier to add a cable from switch to basestation, rather than to juggle cables a bit more to put the base station between the modem and switch. Do you think I'll realise greater performance with the basestation between the switch and the modem?

And yes, I'm very much hoping that this "N" network will fly compared to the "G" networks I've had beftore, I'm just trying to ensure that I can move data as fast as possible fyi: I move about 100GB bursts of data every few days, each time I finish a project on my MBPro, and it'd be nice to have all of that "N" speed available. That's all I'm concerned about :-)

Thanks again for contributing,

Chas

[ghporter]

The "bridging" mode they talk about is what I mentioned-turn off NAT by unchecking the "share a single IP address" box in the Admin Utility. I find it interesting that this is a real problem, even if it's a problem like "my Lamgorghini only does 210 on the straightaways, and I'm disappointed-though I never use it for anything but commuting."

Again, you need to attend to what device is providing DHCP addresses for your network, and if you want all of your devices to see each other, you need to have exactly ONE DHCP server-I recommend the FIRST device after the modem.

I hope this helps.