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For other base stations, you’ll have to check the manual.Īs an alternative, you could use home power-line networking to connect base stations (again, see Plug the WAN (wide area network) port from these subsidiary base stations into a LAN (local area network) port on the primary base station, or into an Ethernet switch that’s plugged into the LAN port. To set this up with the AirPort Extreme, go to AirPort Utility’s Internet pane, select the Internet Connection tab, and select Off (Bridge) from the Connection Sharing menu. You then configure the other base stations to pass traffic in bridge mode that way, they leave the responsibility for assigning IP addresses to the primary base station. To make the multiple-base-stations setup work, you need to configure the main base station as a gateway to your broadband connection. You connect additional base stations through Ethernet, or wirelessly through WDS (Wireless Distribution System), which is built into the AirPort Extreme Base Station and other gateways. In a standard network of multiple base stations, you configure one base station as the gateway, plugged into a broadband router. Other 802.11g and 802.11n Wi-Fi gateways cost as little as $30 to $100 each. You could deploy a bunch of AirPort Base Stations, but that’d get expensive.
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If one base station doesn’t cover your home or office, perhaps two or five-or ten-might. Wi-Fi adapters look for a network name, not a specific gateway. But they can still improve range by transmitting farther and listening more carefully.Īdd More Base StationsĚnother way to extend network range is to build a network with many base stations, all with the same network name. Other World Computing offers three alternatives, each for $68: a USB adapter (Mac OS X 10.3 or later, any model Mac), and a PCI Card and CardBus card (for PowerPC models).Īll of these adapters have one important limitation: They operate only in the crowded 2.4 GHz band.
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The company also has a CardBus card ($65) and PCI Card ($100) that work with PowerPC models running Mac OS 10.3.9 or higher, and upgrade kits for Intel Macs starting at $100.
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NNano USB adapter ($65), for example, works with any Mac running Mac OS X 10.3 or later. Upgrade Your Radio If you have an older Mac without 802.11n built in, you can improve its range by attaching an 802.11n adapter.
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Because those routers improve both transmission power and reception sensitivity, you can update just the gateway and continue using the older adapters on all your computers the range of your network should still improve. Linksys and several other companies sell Draft N routers starting at $100. In testing early this year, Macworld found that the range was indeed quite good. MIMO can improve range (as well as speed).ĪirPort Extreme Base Stations ( ) released in 2007 use Draft N, and Apple claims that the standard has twice the range of its predecessor. Upgrade Your Base Station Routers that are based on the Draft N specification (an early version of the 802.11n networking standard) incorporate MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) antenna arrays. If the problem really is range, there are several easy ways to solve it.
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If iStumbler indicates that you’re having interference problems, you can solve them by following our advice from last month’s Mobile Mac column (see