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I Have several airport extremes of different generations. I want to use a few of them as extenders withe the newest (5th gen) as a base station. How many extenders will the base support without serious degradation of the wireless signal and internet speeds?
null-OTHER, Windows 7, Both apple and win systems on net
The answer depends on whether you plan to "extend" using a wireless connection between the AirPorts, or whether you plan to connect each AirPort using a wired Ethernet connection.
If you plan to use wireless, 3 or 4 extenders is about the practical limit here, and you will need to keep in mind that things can get tricky with wireless. Each extender will need to be located where it can connect directly to the "main" AirPort Extreme....and....each extender needs to be closer to the "main" AirPort than any other extender.
In other words, Apple wireless extend feature works like the hub and spokes of a wheel. The new AirPort is the "hub" and each extender is located at the end of a separate "spoke". One extender is at the top of the wheel, another at the bottom. One is at the left and one is at the right.
It is not possible to extend the signal twice......have one extender pick up a signal from another device that is already extending the signal.
Not sure what you mean by serious degradation, but the wireless extend process typically results in a loss of about half or 50% of the potential speed on the entire network. So, while your network will have greater range, it will be considerably slower.
If you plan to connect each extender back to the main AirPort using a permanent, wired Ethernet cable connection, you can have as many extenders as you want, and you can locate extenders anywhere you want, since the signal through an Ethernet cable can go 300+ feet or about 100 meters with no loss at all. Maximum speeds are maintained on the entire network this way.
The bottom line here.....there is one method of extending that is much better than the other in terms of performance.
AirPort Extreme as extenders
