Q: Where in my house should I locate new AE 6?
I am looking for advice setting up a Airport Extreme 6.
With this set up below, where should I place the AE 6? What should happen to the AE 1?
I have read that the wireless router should not be far from the cable modem, but it seems like the AE 6 would be better placed in the center of the house.
The cable modem and desktop computer are in a side bedroom. The AE Gen1 used to be there. A few years ago, when we started using laptops more and an ATV, I moved the AE 1 to the center of the house, on a high shelf, about 40 feet away. The ATV is in the other direction ~40’.
The Ethernet runs from the Cable modem to the AE Gen1 and then runs back to the desktop computer.
I currently have:
- iMac 27" Late 2012, MB Air A1465 (thanks @LaPastenague for where to locate Model #), iPhone 6s, 5s, 4s, iPads, ATV 4
- Airport Extreme N Gen1
- Motorola SB6141 Cable modem (just updated from SB5100 last week)
- Cox Cable 50 Mbps (usually w/ ~32 Mbps) (we dropped our cable TV last week also, after testing for few weeks)
Any help, would be greatly appreciated!
null, AE 6
Posted on Feb 19, 2016 8:08 AM
With this set up below, where should I place the AE 6? What should happen to the AE 1?
I have read that the wireless router should not be far from the cable modem, but it seems like the AE 6 would be better placed in the center of the house.
A wireless router does NOT have to be in close proximity of the cable modem, so what you read is misleading you ... and you are correct in that placing the wireless router in the center of your house would be best; better still place in nearer the ceiling, if practical, would be even better.
What should happen to the AE 1?
Unless you really need it, I would suggest that you leave it out of your network configuration for a couple of reasons:
- Its Ethernet ports only support 100 Mbps; the ones on your AE 6 support 1 Gbps. This would have greater impact if you use the AE 1 in a roaming network configuration with the AE 6. Note: This configuration would be preferable to an extended one where the connection between them is wireless, but, again, due to the limited bandwidth of the Ethernet ports, you won't be gaining much.
- The AE 1 could not be used to extend the 802.11ac radio mode of your AE 6 model.
- Motorola SB6141 Cable modem (just updated from SB5100 last week)
Unfortunately, the Motorola SB6141 is known to be incompatible with the AirPort base stations. Not that either are bad; they just don't "play nice" together. We get numerous posts here at the ASC and most describe the problem as intermittent loss of Internet connectivity when these two are paired.
Posted on Feb 19, 2016 11:33 AM