[triz]

I'm the IT person at a small pvt. school. The school consists of 2 bldgs about 10 ft from each other. Each bldg has 2 floors w/classrooms througout.
We recently went wireless. We have a Netopia T1 router, I purchased 5 extremes and connected them one on each floor directly to the T1 router using ethernet cables. I set each airport to bridge mode. All Network names are the same for the bases.
Question: Should the channels all be the same?
Does it make a difference if I rename the network names to different names?
Only about 130 computers, but internet is slow. Airport signal is 5 bars, but speed is slow and fluctuates throughout the day.
Is there a better way to set up? ANy suggestions would be appreciated.

[dowNNshift]

Holy crap -- 130 computers sharing the same internet connection?! What kind of bandwidth do you have? They're all getting choked fighting for bandwidth.

Since you're using the extremes as Access Points only in bridge mode, they each need to be on different channels. Download a Wireless sniffing widget and survey what other networks are in the area. You'll need to make sure your base stations are separated at least two channels apart. Change the base station and SSID names -- this will help identify who's supposed to be on what and where, in addition to evenly distribute the network load.

If you're still having internet latency issues, consider getting a secondary broadband internet connection. You can always connect that to one of the AirPort Extremes and set it as a primary that can be range extended.

Apple's support knowledge base as some excellent designing AirPort network articles you might want to check out.