Weak Signal Strength

I have an Airport Extreme in line of sight within 30 feet of a Mac Mini, both in the same room. I've tried different channels and frequency configurations. The best I can seem to do is a signal of -60 with a noise of -95 as measured by the Airport Utility. I think that's a pretty darn weak signal strength. The noise level is good, but the signal is lousy.

Am I right? If so, does anyone have a suggestion as to how to improve the signal strength?

Thanks!

Are you running 5GHz? Also that is -60 dbm to -95 dbm - dbm is logarithmic which is still quite a bit of signal to noise. That is my 5Ghz signal in another room - so yours does seem a little low for being in within line of site. That being said - I do seem to get full bandwidth to my main network and the internet. What are you seeing that made you double check your signal strength.

IvanLasston said:

What are you seeing that made you double check your signal strength.

Click to expand...

I've been having trouble with the Hide My *** (HMA) proxy VPN tunnel premium service running in conjunction with the download manager Folx. I start an overnight download cue running. In the morning I have 100% downloads (which is good!) but an HMA error message on the screen telling me "Connection Failed Unable to download Hidemyass config data. Error - The request timed out." I've gone over this with HMA and Folx and their best advice is that the problem relates to my wireless connection being interrupted at sometime during the session. On checking the WiFi, the only questionable thing I saw was what looked like a weak signal. My Mac Mini Airport shows all bars of signal, and I've never experienced a lost connection while personally using the Mini online. Movies stream OK, etc. So, I don't know. Maybe the -60 signal is OK and some other factor is causing the HMA drop outs. What do you think?

PS: Yes, I'm running 5GHz at this time. I've tried 2.4Ghz too.

If you use istumbler you'll see that -60 to -95 works out to a 41% signal - which is yellow but a high yellow. I would be very doubtful that your Wifi is causing the dropout - if it was your wifi, would see media streaming go south pretty fast. One way to isolate it - is hook up wired and try your download. If you don't get the timeout then it is something with your wireless connection. If you do get the timeout even wired then it probably is something DNS or TCP/IP or Firewall related.