[Andrew Stephens]

So, what a day. I've been trying to make a wireless network in the big (very big) house. One side of the house was easy. Connect broadband in to modem, connect modem to AEX, set up extendible wireless network. Go. One AEX block happily gave a strong signal in the front office, kitchen, breakfast room and out into the hall way and in fact right over to the other end of the hallway.

The network needs to extend though a series of two linked rooms into the back office. Now on one side of the doorway the signal (from the original AEX is still three bars. Step through the door and - bam no signal, at all. So I set up a repeater AEX in the hall be the door way, set it to extend network. Now full strength in the hall, step through the doorway (literally a foot inside, bam - no signal, at all. So I moved the hall repeater to line of sight and set up another AEX in the first room and got a weak signal inside the room. I set up another AEX in the next room and after much fiddling I managed to get a signal into the second room. But that was it. At the other end of the network was supposed to be a TC. Now if I configured the TC onto the wireless network I could have my mac sat right next to it and no signal.

Meanwhile in the next room is a netgear wireless router that can push a signal through one room fine but not into the firasst room or the back office.

firstly, any ideas why these rooms are so radio opaque compared to the front of the house (same construction) where one AEX covers the whole place? I was planning on two AEX's covering the whole place but it was taking four to get the network signal only 3/4 of the way through.

I tried adjusting the signal across several bands starting on automatic (6), then trying 2 and then 10, no difference. I even put one AEX in a window of an adjoining room and one line of site in the window of one of the trouble rooms, no good.

The owner did say that she had tried and failed to build a wireless network before but I figured that the new n AEX's were better plus it's easy to get the setting wrong on older versions of the airport app, but it seems she was right. It's a real radio Bermuda triangle.

Sorry for the long post but hopefully detail may help point out a way forward.

thanks

[Eug]

Out of interest: Why did you choose channels 2 and 10? Recommended is usually 1, 6, 11. 2 doesn't overlap with 10, but both overlap with 6. ie. If you use 2, 6, and 10, then you're getting constant interference. 1 overlaps with 2,3,4,5. 2 overlaps with 1,3,4,5,6. 3 overlaps with 1,2,4,5,6,7. Etc.

Oh and IMO the Airport Express doesn't have a very good range anyway.

P.S. I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record, but I successfully used (the most recent iteration of) powerline networking, specifically to avoid all these issues. If you have a good (recent) set of electrical lines running through the house, it may work well for you too. I still have wireless, but the backbone of the network is thus wired, so one doesn't have to worry about "daisychaining" wireless signals to get WiFi throughout the house.

[Andrew Stephens]

Thanks Eug

My new plan is to have the original AEX network in the larger part of the house but run a powerline connection from the main router into the back of the house and pick that up on the other netgear router. I'll then run a cat 5e cable into the back office directly into the Time capsule and use that as a wireless network in that room. If I set the front network on 1 and the back on 11 then they should miss each other.

In the front of the house there is a Sony VIAO laptop and a VIAO desktop which will connect to the router via ethernet, while the AEX can stay and provide wireless coverage for visitors or the houses MacBook.

In the back office there's a Dell which will connect via ethernet to the back router and a MacBook and and iBook which can connect to the back wireless network via the time capsule.

A couple of comments:
I'm actually astounded by the range of the AEX in the front of the house, and totally stumped by the range shown in the rest of the house. At one point I had my MacBook Pro mere feet from the time capsule and was only getting one bar.

I guess the powerline networking is preyty much plug and play (pun intended). I'll have the front router dole out dhcp addresses but I'll ahve to remember to disable dhcp on the back router.

In fact my network will look pretty similar to your example but with only two zones.

[Eug]

I only own one Airport Express, but I find its reliability for wireless (and range) somewhat less than stellar.

I'm using the Netgear HDX101 for powerline networking, but mainly because it was cheap (since I purchased refurbs). Mine works very well, but it doesn't follow the HomePlug AV standard. This review has both my Netgear HDX101 and the Linksys HomePlug AV units side by side.

The other problem is that while those Netgear units plug and play, they come with a generic password. However, in order to change the password, you have to run Windows Netgear software (which doesn't run under Parallels). I don't think the Linksys set has Mac software either, and there is no web configuration utility.

BTW, the review states that the Netgear stuff in the review is HomePlug 1.0. That is wrong. HomePlug 1.0 is an old defunct standard that has a max theoretical speed of 14 Mbps, with real-world speeds being way, way less than that.

With my Netgear HDX101 Powerline HD stuff, I get 39 Mbps in the same room, and 20+ Mbps across the house.

[Andrew Stephens]

I have these

http://www.faculty-x.net/homeplug



seems like they are Mac compatible out of the box.

[Eug]

If your lines are good, then they should work. Good luck. The "85 Mbps" units supposedly aren't quite as robust for dealing with interference as the current "200 Mbps" hardware, and the "85 Mbps" stuff is much slower of course, but if they work, then they work. Anyways, tell us what happens, both in terms of reliability and in terms of speed.

All of that stuff is "Mac compatible out of the box", but the problem is that they ship with a standard password. So what? Well, if someone else in the next house buys the same hardware, they can theoretically hop onto your network. To prevent this, you must change the password. However, for most models, the configuration software to change the password is for Windows only. The configuration software for my Netgear wouldn't work under Parallels either. Caused my Mac to freak out. (Luckily I have a spare PC which I could use. Also, it should work fine under Boot Camp.)

[Andrew Stephens]

Oh this is not going well. Having now abandoned wifi I have plugged on powerline unit into a socket near the modem/router and connected it via ethernet. It shows up one green ethernet light, one green link/act light and a flashing green pl/act light.

I've plugged another unit in the back room and connected it to my Mac via ethernet, however the mac is failing to connect. It "should" see the remote router which is set to hand out ip addresses via DCHP but it just aself assigns as it cannot to the router.
Hair all pulled out now!!

[Eug]

Make sure you reboot the router and the Mac first before concluding it doesn't work.

Also, have you tried it...

1) In the same room on the same circuit?
2) With other hardware?

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Make sure you reboot the router and the Mac first before concluding it doesn't work.

Also, have you tried it...

1) In the same room on the same circuit?
2) With other hardware?

That was just plain weird. First I connected the powerline adapters and the whole setup worked, slowly for about 5 minutes. Then stopped and the adapters no longer reported a link. Try as I might I could not get a link using any of the plug sockets in that part of the house. I turns out that that area is on a semi separate circuit and seems to have some really heavy current draw on it (several horse walkers) which are giant electric carosels for exercising race horses.

Anyway, I got a good link from the nearest socket in the other part of the hose and threaded a long cable to the back router.

Seems to work. Will route cable through roof tomorrow.

Crappily the power fritzed while updating network settings on the PC and this seems to have corrupted the copy of IE7 on that (FF works fine) so now I need to download IE7 again.

Any advice on general system diagnosis for win xp along the line of single user mode/repair permissions on OSX would be appreciated.

[dimmer]

Try hitting F8 as you boot and select "Last Known Good Configuration" from the menu presented. May not help, but simple and can't hurt.