tsm1955

Q: i have a mac OSx installed airport extreme, and wanted to extend the range to reach my shop. so i bought an airport express. the shop is in another building, made of wood and has windows. it is aprox. 300 ft away from the airport extreme. i installed the

i have a mac osx and installed an airport extreme in my house, and wanted to extend the range down to my shop which is aprox 300 ft away. it is a wood building with windows. i bought a express and placed it in the window at the shop and the light doesnt turn green. (express is working i tested it at the house) last weekend i took my ipad and walked to the shop and about halfway down the signal strenghth went from 3bars to 2bars,when i get into the the shop there is barely 1bar. i want to stream the nascar races this season and am just beside myself. my internet carrier sold me a high speed modem that doesnt seem to make any difference. do i need to place another express between house and shop? if so how do i weather proof it?  can i run a dsl line down to the shop from my house and hook it up to the express? been messing with this for over a month with no success.. please help me!

Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jan 18, 2012 7:30 AM

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Q: i have a mac OSx installed airport extreme, and wanted to extend the range to reach my shop. so i bought an airport express. the s ... more

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  • by Tesserax,

    Tesserax Tesserax Jan 18, 2012 9:50 AM in response to tsm1955
    Level 9 (54,786 points)
    Wireless
    Jan 18, 2012 9:50 AM in response to tsm1955

    The primary issue that you will need to contend with is the distance between routers. 300' would be at the fringe of the signal coming from the base station located in the house which, most likely, make it too "weak" to extend/repeat with the second base station at the shop.

     

    There is a method to configure a relay base station between them in a Wireless Distribution System (WDS), but a WDS has two major drawbacks: 1) It can only operate in the 802.11g Radio Mode, and 2) For every base station participating in the WDS, the overall bandwidth will be cut in half .., so with a total of three (main, relay, & remote), the maximum of 54 Mbps (for 802.11g) would be more like 15-17 Mbps. If you plan on streaming HD video (either 720p or 1080p), your local wireless network may not have enough bandwidth to do so successfully.

     

    You proposal to run the DSL line to the shop does offer another option. Instead of running a DSL line, run an Ethernet cable between the house and the shop. You would connect one end to any of the available LAN ports on the AirPort Extreme to the Ethernet port on the AirPort Express. You can then configure both base stations into a roaming network and not have bandwidth loss of the WDS.