Does Mac's Airport Card Factor Into Using g, b or n Airport Express Mode?

Question

Does Mac's Airport Card Factor Into Using g, b or n Airport Express Mode?

I have an older 802.11g Airport Extreme Base Station and 2 802.11g Airport Express Units configured to Participate in a WDS network. The 2 Express Units are in different parts of my home to allow Internet access to Macs in other rooms. The Internet connection speeds of the Macs using the Expresses seems to have slowed quite a bit. I recently made some adjustments to the base station and expresses, setting them to 802.11g only (they were previously at 802.11b/g). I'm trying to determine if the Airport cards in the Macs themselves use a specific mode, but using System Profiler, I can't seem to determine if the cards in the Macs are mode-(b, g, or n) specific. Does anyone know 1) how to determine this and/or 2) if it matters?

2.66 Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.7), 8 GB RAM

Posted on Aug 31, 2009 9:19 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Duane

Level 10

124,267 points

Aug 31, 2009 9:24 AM in response to branfordman54

Using WDS cuts your available wireless bandwidth in half.

What Macs do you have? If they are 802.11g capable and your network is configured to 802.11g only then those Macs must be using 802.11g to connect.

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Answer 2

Aug 31, 2009 10:02 AM in response to Duane

Hi Duane:

My daughter's MacBookPro is now away at college with her, but the "family" iMac is a 17" 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo iMac (Early 2006 version). Using http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ I get roughly 15,000 kbps download and 2,300 upload on my Ethernet to Modem connected Mac Pro. The old iMac (using Airport Express) doesn't break 3000 kbps/2200 kbps upload/download.

I've had trouble in the past setting up the older finicky Extreme Base Station and Expresses and ended up settling on WDS to get them to work at all. Is the alternative to set them "join an existing wireless network"? Although, I'm pretty Mac-savvy, I've always found Apple's Airport setup instructions and examples to be ambiguous to the point of useless.

Also, I was considering upgrading all 3 Airport units (base station and 2 expresses) to the newer 802.11n units. Would this matter considering we're currently using an older iMac. (My daughter has a MacBook Pro that's also from 2006).

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Answer 3

Duane

Level 10

124,267 points

Aug 31, 2009 1:57 PM in response to branfordman54

I've had trouble in the past setting up the older finicky Extreme Base Station and Expresses and ended up settling on WDS to get them to work at all. Is the alternative to set them "join an existing wireless network"?

If you do that, the AirPort Express (AX) is not wirelessly extending your network. It is merely acting as another wireless client and merely provides streaming music and remote printing capabilities.

Also, I was considering upgrading all 3 Airport units (base station and 2 expresses) to the newer 802.11n units. Would this matter considering we're currently using an older iMac. (My daughter has a MacBook Pro that's also from 2006).

If you did that you could use 802.11n's "extend network" feature instead of WDS. You would still need to operate them in an 802.11g compatible mode.

However the new AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) can be configured to operate simultaneously at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. So your early 2006 iMac can be connected via 802.11g at 2.4 GHz while your 802.11n clients could connect via 802.11n at 5 GHz.

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Answer 4

Aug 31, 2009 2:40 PM in response to Duane

So, going back to your original reply, assuming I stay with all the hardware I have for the time being, how do I set up the two AXs so that I'm not cutting my available wireless bandwidth in half?

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Answer 5

Duane

Level 10

124,267 points

Sep 1, 2009 9:45 AM in response to branfordman54

Using your current hardware...

If you want the 2nd AX to extend the wireless network provided by the first AX, you would need to connect them via Ethernet.

If you only want to use the 2nd AX's ability to stream music or for remote printing, you would configure the 2nd AX to join the wireless network as a client.

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