Coverage Problem

These kinds of wireless setups are really hard to work out.

I presume the building is all solid reinforced concrete?? You have a lot of stairs.. are all points you indicated on the same level?

1 and 2 are very close.. I see no good reason why signal is good at 1 and poor at 2 other than you have very solid walls.

Extend wireless is always dependent on getting decent wireless signal in the first place. There is no point in extending wireless, if the signal at a point from the TC is so poor the extender has trouble picking it up.

So I would start again.

Turn off all the express.

Get a laptop, either PC (inssider) or Mac (istumbler). there are also wireless analysis software apps for iOS and Android phone. Do a wireless survey.. from just the TC and pick up where the signal drops to no less than 2bars or about 50% signal. Mark that on your floor plan. It is pointless placing Extenders beyond that point.. there is no level of signal left to extend.

And with Apple system you cannot extend an extender.. so all of them have to link back to the TC.. so I think you simply have too many extenders doing nothing useful.

You need to get ethernet connection or use EOP (ethernet over power) adapters also called homeplug, to connect one or two Express back to the TC and run it as roaming network.. this is far far superior.

See the info here.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4260

This is part of larger document that talks about extend wireless.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4145

The Apple wireless routers are no RF powerhouse.. they fall into the medium level in most tests.

If you really want to cover a larger area.. you need RF amplified routers.. eg Asus RT-N66U.

You cannot extend the signal from anything but the main router..

That is a limitation of the apple extend wireless system..

All extenders must connect to the TC.

The old WDS could have a satellite station as intermdiate link.. no more.

That is why I said,, you need to have it setup from only the TC.. and only place extenders where there is strong signal.. your positions 3 and 4 are probably useless.

When I'm close to 2, I think at this point I'm connecting to TC, not 2.

I think or I feel the signal not extended?

You will connect to whichever is stronger.

How can I identify which access point I'm connecting to?

You can tell which you connect to at least on an Apple laptop by holding down the option key when you click on the airport fan symbol.

BSSID is the MAC address of the particular wireless AP you are connected to.. it also shows signal strength. And data rates. Look at the label on each unit and get its MAC address. .you will then know which one you are connecting to.

Well, can you provide me with app name?

Not unless you tell me an app for what device.

I did already provide you with app names for a PC laptop.. inssider.

And an app for a Mac .. istumbler.

iOS devices.. and Android.. sorry I use neither.. google for wireless analyser.

Are you on 10.8.4 yet? Mine has an option for a new version of Wireless Diagnostics:

As you probably know, most of it is over my head, but Window > Utilities from the menubar has all sorts of what looks like good stuff:

I didn't know they had finally put back what was in 5.6 utility.. after all this is not new.. this was in the airport utility until its recent .. so called.. update.

LaPastenague wrote:

I didn't know they had finally put back what was in 5.6 utility.. after all this is not new.. this was in the airport utility until its recent .. so called.. update.

Yeah, "update" sure isn't the right word. (The right words won't pass the bad word filter here 👿.)

The new display is much better (at least to me, since it actually shows the signal-to-noise ratio, so I don't have to try to figure it out 😉).

There are several other things in the toolbar of the Utilities window, too. One of these days I may figure out what they mean.

The SNR scale is 40-45.. so it accentuates the slight dips in signal you see in the graph below it. Although a horizontal scale of some sort would seem to be rather relevant. Is this over 3 hours or 3min or 3days?

And the tool has been there since Lion.. good to know.. eh??

http://technorati.com/technology/article/how-to-use-apples-os-x/

LaPastenague wrote:

The SNR scale is 40-45.. so it accentuates the slight dips in signal you see in the graph below it. Although a horizontal scale of some sort would seem to be rather relevant. Is this over 3 hours or 3min or 3days?

Yup, but if you watch it, you can tell, sorta.

And the tool has been there since Lion.. good to know.. eh??

Yup, but as I recall, you had to go into /System/Library somewhere to find it. And the new one seems to have more stuff (don't know if it's good stuff . . .)