Airport Express - Wifi Coverage Issue

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Airport Express - Wifi Coverage Issue

Hi,

I have a question about wifi coverage. I have a home office in a large 3 story victorian house. The walls are pretty thick and solid due to old-school construction. The internet connection comes in on the first floor in the front of the house. Then the connection goes into an Airport Extreme (4th gen). There are three Airport Express access points spread out throughout the house. Users in the upstairs bedroom frequently report very slow internet connection. Sometimes there are up to 20 devices attached to wifi. ping times from a computer attached to the airport extreme to the upstairs access point sometimes are 1000ms, 50% packet loss. Other times they are >10ms. Users walk around a lot with laptops, iPads, and other devices. THere are 3 Apple TVs throughout the house. The internet connection going into the house is 25mbps Comcast Cable

Airport Extreme (4th gen)

Location: 1st floor front office
wireless mode: create a wireless network
ipv6 mode: link-local only

Airport Express (2nd gen)

Location: 2nd floor bedroom
Relation to the Airport Extreme: up one level, several walls (3 or 4) and a staircase are between this device and the airport extreme
wireless mode: join a wireless network
ipv6 mode: router

Airport Express (2nd gen)

Location: 1st floor
Relation to the Airport Extreme: same floor, about 25 feet away, one wall in between
wireless mode: extend a wireless network
ipv6 mode: link-local only

Airport Express (1st gen)

Location: 2nd floor
Relation to the Airport Extreme: up one level, perhaps one floor and one wall in between
wireless mode: join a wireless network
ipv6 mode: link-local only

Thank you for reviewing the above info. I am trying to reconfigure this network to make it as solid as possible. Before I posted here I reviewed the apple docs but am not sure how to proceed. Here are my questions

1. should all of the airport express be set to "extend a wireless network"

2. we don't want to use IPv6. should the IPv6 mode be set to link-local only?

3. Is there anything else that anyone can think of for making this setup better?

Thanks to anyone who can take the time to respond to my questions,

Andrew

iTunes-OTHER, Windows XP

Posted on May 29, 2014 2:58 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

158,484 points

May 29, 2014 9:15 PM in response to 4n6r3w

1. should all of the airport express be set to "extend a wireless network"

If you want all of the AirPort Express base stations to be used to extend the AirPort Extreme, then yes, you want them all to be configured to "extend a wireless network." Using the "join" option would repurpose them as a wireless Ethernet bridge.

The issue you will have will be the distance and building construction between the extending base station and the base station that it is extending, especially those on the second floor. Please check out the following AirPort User Tip for the best placement of the extending base stations for maximum bandwidth performance.

2. we don't want to use IPv6. should the IPv6 mode be set to link-local only?

That should be fine. You will not want to completely disable it as it is used by the Bonjour service.

3. Is there anything else that anyone can think of for making this setup better?

Yes. However, it would require that all base stations are interconnected by Ethernet. This would establish a roaming network. This type of network would be superior for overall bandwidth performance over an extended network, especially in your case of multiple floors and the building construction material used.

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Answer 2

4n6r3w Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2014 8:29 AM in response to 4n6r3w

Thanks a lot for the reply. This is the info I was looking for.

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