Wifi Problems

[paddyf123]

Hi having wifi problems, I have knocked something up in photoshop to explain it a bit better (a picture is worth a thousand words) especially when trying to describe our wifi setup! The problem is the airport express is flashing green but not working. The timecapsule which is plugged into the homehub by an ethernet cable is flashing orange. There are 2 wireless setups, the apple network (timecapsule and airport extreme) and then upstairs there is the edimax which extends the signal from the homehub. Is this an efficient setup? The house is old and has thick walls so it is necessary to have the edimax and the airport extreme. We have a 20mb package from BT but are consistently getting 1.5-6mb is that the sort of speed that one should expect as I am aware that it will never actually be 20mb... Any help would be great. Thanks
Paddy

 

[Kaveman]

This is very nice and will help you in the future, but a complex system like this is better debugged step by step.

Speed will be limited by the slowest link in the chain. If you hold down the Option Key while accessing the AirPort/WiFi Menubar the you will see additional info.

Get a laptop, Start at the ADSL, bring all the BaseStations as to it and ensure they are up to date and configured correctly before placing them.

Work your way out from the ASDL with your laptop, placing and testing each device.

You are building a very complex chain, it is important that you don't end up with loops!

 

[paddyf123]

Hi Kaveman, thanks for the reply, sorry to be stupid but how would i go about ensuring they are up to date and configured correctly? Im not very clued up about wireless networks. So:

1)the Internet/broadband signal comes from the wall socket and into the ADSL box which then goes through another cable to the homehub. Does this need checking? if so how?

2)BT homehub all lights flashing blue indicating all is good... but that needs checking too, so connect my laptop to that right? I have tried holding down the option key but the information doesnt really mean anything to me: PHY Mode/802.11g/BSSID/Channel/Security/RSSI/Transmit Rate etc... what should i be looking for and how do i update it?

3)Then i need to ensure that the BT homehub wireless signal is just being transmitted to the Edimax upstairs and thats it, so that would be a channel setting within some menu? and that would exclude it from creating a loop with the homehub--->timecapsule--->airport express network?

4)The time capsule linked by ethernet to the homehub needs to be getting broadband from the BT homehub and then broadcasting that signal on another channel to the imac upstairs to allow backup/timemachine and provide wifi signal to the airport express down the hallway.

Would it be better to create one network? where the homehub,timecapsule,airport express and edimax all are broadcasting the same channel?
At the moment the (homehub--->timecapsule--->airport express) network isnt working at all or syncing backups with the imac upstairs.

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions, much appreciated.
Kind Regards
Paddy