I am setting up my sister in-law to hop onto my wifi signal. (we live in adjacent condos). Probably about 100 feet or so through multiple walls to see my airport express. Speed crawls compared to me in the same room as my non-Apple wifi router. Would I see a speed difference if I moved the airport express to an outlet closer to her?
SO, I can move the express closer to her unit (as long as it still sees my router) but how can I tell if it's using the airport and hopping (passing through) to router or ignoring express and going straight for the router? Any way other than no speed improvement after moving express?
What is the make & model of your "main" router? Which exact model is your AirPort Express base station?
As Csound1 has already mentioned, distance and any forms of Wi-Fi interference will affect the Wi-Fi signal of your wireless network. There are ways to both measure signal quality and placement of the Express that could help ... but, most likely, she will never get the same bandwidth performance that you are getting in your condo.
One option, is to find out if any of your electrical circuits are shared between condos. Chances are not good that they would be, but if they are we may have another option that may be worth a try using powerline adapters.
Fortinet 30D. Latest Express Apple is selling. (just got it ten days ago)
I had planned to start moving the Express to see where I could place it between us and still have a green light (which I interpret as seeing the wifi network)
How would you go about measuring signal quality for determining placement? Use the iPhone? (I have a 6+)
Electrical is separate.
Fortinet 30D. Latest Express Apple is selling. (just got it ten days ago)
The Fortigate 30D is a wireless firewall gateway. You will not be able to extend its wireless network with the AirPort Express using a wireless connection between them as they would not be compatible for this. Is the Express connected to the gateway by wireless now?
I had planned to start moving the Express to see where I could place it between us and still have a green light (which I interpret as seeing the wifi network)
Unless you connect the Express back to the Fortigate by Ethernet this won't matter ... as again, the Express cannot extend the main router's Wi-Fi network with a wireless connection between them.
How would you go about measuring signal quality for determining placement? Use the iPhone? (I have a 6+)
Unfortunately, the method I would offer would require that you use a Mac notebook. Would it be possible to borrow one to do the testing?
Electrical is separate.
Ok, thanks. That would rule out the use of powerline adapters to try to create a pseudo Ethernet connection between condos. If this were possible, you could have placed the Express in her condo to provide Wi-Fi there.
Yes, can get AExp onto I would have to interpret the green light as it has the wifi signal and access to the internet (otherwise, wouldn't there be an orange light?)
Express did connect wirelessly to Fortinet but Extreme would not (had to return it).
My computer is a 13" MBAir.
Here was the original plan. I had ethernet run from my unit over to her's a few years ago. On our side, the ethernet ended at a jack in the wall about 8 feet from the closet where the Fortinet is in, since after construction, they were not able to fish the cable to the closet. (Fortinet replaced a Airport base station). We were using the Airport Express to hop over to the closet so I wouldn't have cable running along the floor. Tried to resurrect this arrangement recently. But running wired through the installed cable to my wall jack into the Airport Express to make the final hop, she doesn't see my network. She does see the wifi signal. I'm not sure if she is seeing the Fortinet's signal or Express' signal.
The Express can support performing as a wireless Ethernet bridge. The Extreme or Time Capsule cannot. Regardless, in this mode, the Express is NOT extending the Fortigate gateway's Wi-Fi network. The green status LED just means that there were no configuration issues with the Express. It does NOT necessarily indicate Internet connectivity.
We were using the Airport Express to hop over to the closet so I wouldn't have cable running along the floor.
... and in this case, the Express would be performing as a wireless Ethernet bridge. You can then connect wired devices to its Ethernet ports for network/Internet access. But, again, it will NOT be providing a Wi-Fi network in this configuration.
But running wired through the installed cable to my wall jack into the Airport Express to make the final hop, she doesn't see my network. She does see the wifi signal. I'm not sure if she is seeing the Fortinet's signal or Express' signal.
At this point, unless the Ethernet cable still runs between condos, attaching an Ethernet cable to the Express to the Ethernet port on the wall will not work. If it did, she would be able to connect a wired client on her end and gain Internet access that way.
The Wi-Fi signal that she is "seeing" would be that of the Fortigate gateway.
Addendum - I am not clear if she is seeing the airport express's passed through signal or she's seeing the main router, just that she is able to see and get on the wifi network. It's just pokey.
Yes, wifi signal decreases with the square of the distance travelled, other things (walls etc) will slow it down further.
In theory yes, but if the original signal is bad due to the distance so will an extended version of it be.
Does wifi speed drop off with distance?
