Wireless Question

[ruckus]

I'm new an not sure where to post this so I hope the general forum is okay.


I have my cable modem hooked to a Netgear WNDR3700. It works great but is located in an equipment room in the basement. I want to improve my wireless coverage so I hooked an old Apple Airport Extreme to one of the ethernet jacks elsewhere in the house that is connected to the WNDR3700. When I setup the Airport I used the wizard and selected extend a current network and use the current SSID and password. With all this done I da better coverage but my wireless speed dropped dramatically. I'm sure it's something I am doing but I am a novice with networking. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[stevech]

could it be that the Apple WiFi device is old enough that it supports 802.11b and not 11g, nor 11n?
11b was about 11Mbps net yield max.

Another possibility: If both devices have the same SSID and encryption mode/settings, the PC may choose to connect to the more distant device. That would probably lead to lower speed due to the weaker signal.

Change the SSID on the added Apple device.
Config. your PC to have both SSIDs in the list.
You can manually choose the desired SSID based on where you are.
The WiFi/802.11 standards don't require the client PC device to choose strongest-signal, and some product don't try to do so, if there are multiple access point/router devices on the same SSID.

 

[ruckus]

Will give that a try but am not sure that is the problem as when I connect to the one that is far away the throughput goes up significantly