Airport Problems

Okay, we just got a new G5 straight from Apple with its wireless connection. We've already bought an Airport Extreme base station, and so we connected it with that.

The first problem is reception. Many times it will bounce up and down from 2 bars to 3 bars, rarely will it ever go the full 4 bars, and yet the Airport Extreme base station is right downstairs! Should only one level in a house make that much difference?

Also, could we buy a better airport antenna for the computer, and would it make a difference? And if we could, where would we get it?

The second problem may not be related, but I'm going to ask anyway. Ever since we got the G5, it has had more kernel panics in a few months than my old Graphite G3 ever had in years. I've heard that a loose airport card has caused crashes in the past, could that be it?

Thanks for all your help.

Nova6 said:

The first problem is reception. Many times it will bounce up and down from 2 bars to 3 bars, rarely will it ever go the full 4 bars, and yet the Airport Extreme base station is right downstairs! Should only one level in a house make that much difference?

Click to expand...

Your problem maybe the placement of the base station. remember that the walls and floors can cause interference. You might try moving the base station around the room on the first floor, to see if you can get a better connection.

I've got AirPort Extreme in my PowerBook and so the aerials are on the top of the monitor on both sides - great, it works from any room in the house. I used to have a desktop PC upstairs with a wireless network card in it, without an aerial. It was rubbish. When it worked, it managed all right, but you couldn't move the monitor too close or it lost the signal.

Okay, thanks.

So, no one knows anything about being able to buy better antennas for the computer itself?

There are none for the computer (Mac) itself. You can get an external LinkSys box and it might work better. You used to be able to get external directional Antennas for the AP Base Stations, but I don't know if the new ones still support that. You could get an AP Express and use it as a bridge between the Mac and the Base Station....

External aerial for G5

I'm having the same problems with my recently acquired 2.5Ghz G5, in an apparently similar physical setup but connecting to a Netgear DG834G wireless DSL router. Lousy signal and random drop-outs. AP Grapher shows a 40 - 50% varying level of reception for the G5, compared to 87% rock solid for a graphite G4 sat nearby. Mac is upstairs, the router just at the bottom of the stairs down below. Using 801.11b mode instead of 802.11g mode may have helped stability a little (greater range, slower top-speed but latter academic for pure DSL usage I would imagine)

Dr Bott now advertise that both their ExtendAIR Omni and Direct antennae will plug directly into the airport socket on a G5 to improve the reception.

They are quite pricey, but I snagged an Omni version from eBay last week....

Well, yes, they do plug in to the G5, and, yes, they do function with the G5, but do they improve reception ? To be honest I can't see any noticeable improvement compared to using the original T-bar antenna. This is puzzling as they are supposed to offer quite a boost.

In sheer frustration I've been snaking a veeeery loooong ethernet cable down the stairs - much to my wife's annoyance !

I'm wondering if these G5's are prone to airport problems...

We've been having so much trouble with airport and internet related stuff on this computer, and I've heard that a loose airport card can cause such havoc...