yet a few times every hour, it fades and drops - so for every hour, we seem to have 5-10 min of down time. It seems to be worse at times when most of our neighbors are sucking on the neighborhood straw, so to speak...but it is a bit of an annoying mystery (esp. if I am working on posting something on line as a blog, long post at DU, etc) and it loses signal - and I lose my work.

FIOS has a home run dedicated to each user. It only runs on fiber optic.

When we bought this property there was no fiber and we are too far for DSL. Cable would have been our only choice. Fortunately, since then, they brought fiber out here and when we decided to move here it was one less worry.

Microwave's? Have you tried changing the channel the wireless works on? Default is normally 6. Try one end or the other to see if that helps.
I know you said you live in a house, but, do you live in an apartment? The neighbors, around, above or below you could be causing the interference.
Hams in the neighborhood?

No neighbors close enough to interfere (at least we can't see any of their networks like we did in the old place).

I have changed channels and it never seemed to matter, but now that you mention it, I wonder if the AEx or the access pont are randomly channel surfing. Isn't that an option in their settings?

In the US we use 11 channels for G. the reality is there are only 3 unique channels: 1 6 and 11. rest are mixtures of the 3. (transmit on one, recieve on another.

u might try switching channels. it could be u are having interference from some house nearby on the same channel. auto-select is often just random and not optimum.

i'd try switching to the unique channels first.

The rounter was set to a single channel a long time ago, but we now don't use that WiFi signal. I need to check the AEx and access point channels to see if they're static or dynamic.

Experiment with the channels, but your only 3 good choices on the 2.4GHz band are 1, 6 and 11. You're actually making problems worse if you don't use one of those three.

OTOH, if you upgrade to a newer router, that does 802.11n in the 5GHz range, you get a lot more channels to play with.

The AEBS is using the 5GHz band. Right now I see no other devices on that band except mine. Mine is set for one sort of random channel switching. I may be getting drops on the streaming when it switches? That just occurred to me as I write this.

You really have to do this as a process of elimination, there's too many variables at the moment. I switched from working with a Belkin to a Netgear AP a while back and although the actual received signal dropped by a couple of dB my connection got considerably more reliable.

Your Airport Extreme can be configured as a wireless repeater/range extender according to Apple, that might be the way to use it to boost signal to the rest of the house.

http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/product/MD031LL/A?pqid=QC22KXTTUCCJ99ATTKDJJPFY4Y7HUX24T

Right now the AEx is set in "bridge" mode. Isn't that the same thing as an extender/repeater? I've done some hunting through the google machine and kept coming up dry.

The modem is in the garage, as is the wired router. I connect an AirPort Extreme base station via Ethernet, and use that and two airport express units to cover the whole house (and on good days all the neighbor's houses too, and they ain't close.) I do the wireless using same vendor equipment because I didn't do that previously and it was nothing but trouble.

You have

Cable modem/router ==wired==> AEBS ==WiFi==> AEx ==WiFi==> Devices

I got the AEBS for two reasons. First because it can host a USB printer. Second because it reportedly had the greatest range (at up to 850 feet).

I also have an Airport Express but I use that only when I travel.

The two aex are repeaters, any device can roam to any of the three apple wifi units. I used apple because they also do music streaming so iTunes plays over the house sound system.

it's FREE.

put it on a laptop and determine what channel has the least activity. (usually 3 or 4)
Move your AP to supply a stronger signal to your devices.

If you have more than 15 SSIDs over -80 dBm, in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, consider a 5 GHz dual-band AP if your clients (and bluray support it).

Watch your neighbors channels to see if they are using 40 MHz channel bonding.. that will severely limit your available spectrum. (you will notice their SSID channels double in width every few seconds)

Note: video streaming in HD requires a ton of bandwidth. If you can, run a Cat5e or better from your router to your BluRay, or any other streaming device. Until the FCC opens up the additional channels in the VHF spectrum for WiFi, and the hardware supports it... or you have a very strong signal on an uncongested, little interference, 2.4 GHz spectrum, or are on the 5 GHz spectrum - video over WiFi is still hit and miss. Go wired if you can, and go with at least 100 MB/s (1000 MB/s if your router supports it).

Never daisy-chain switches (client -> switch -> router's port). The router's LAN ports are a switch. You can only have two switches before you will start having problems due the internal ARP table s an latency.

So . . . . I installed InSSIDer (cool little app!). I was amazed at how many other routers show up. We're pretty far from our nearest neighbors, but bam! Three have what appear to be FIOS default names, they are all on channel 6, and they are all Actiontech hardware, the routers given away by FIOS in this part of the world. There is a Cisco unit on channel 1 and a Belkin unit, also on 1.

My AEBS was on channel 6, too. My antique Linksys WAP was on channel 10.

I moved the Linksys to channel 4 and my AEBS to channel 11.

While watching Netflix, the speed varied from 13.8MB/s down to 1.3MB/s. Still not good enough for a stable stream of HD programming.

Today I ran ethernet cable on a home run from my FIOS router to the BlueRay player. I had a 100' spool of it and have that running along the floor, up the stairs, across a room and into the TV room. We watched streaming HD on Netflix and it was rock solid stable with speeds over 25MB/s with occasional drops to 15 or so.

So it seems my wireless issues remain. It is sufficiently fast and stable for normal laptop use, but not good enough to stream HD. I'll have to figure out how to permanently route the cable and then pull wire to the teevee.

Get yourself a directional antenna and hook it to the Linksys and then point the antenna at your Blue Ray player, the nice thing about a directional antenna is not only does it strengthen signal in the direction you point it, it also weakens the unwanted signals in other directions.

Wifi is actually microwave frequencies and doesn't penetrate structure very well, units that will pick up a couple of hundred yards away in the open won't make three walls and a couple of dozen feet indoors often. You have a floor and several walls to penetrate, more signal will help your speeds.

Here's one made in the USA with a 30 day money back guarantee if it doesn't work for you.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BilcoWifi-20-dbi-Cantenna-Kit-Tripod-3ft-of-cable-/390258796230?pt=US_Networking_Boosters_Extenders_Antennas&hash=item5add3ca6c6

Or you could try this, it's what I was using up until my wifi AP moved a lot further away. A little aluminum foil and some cardboard gave me a measured 6 dB of gain which was enough to solidly bring in an otherwise spotty connection. I was able to watch Netflix in 720p HD over that connection where I could barely log onto DU before.



http://kakopa.com/wifi/index.html

If you set the same SSID on each radio, with the same encryption, same preshared key, everything same-same, except the broadcast channel, I think you'll be ok. If you have 3 radios, try them on channels 1, 6, and 11--in that linear order through your house. These are non-overlapping channels. With this sort of topology (all radios wired into your LAN), you don't need to set up bridging, you don't need to provide the MAC address of other radios. In fact, your PC's/mobile devices do all the work when you're set up like this. The access points don't know about one another, nor do they need to. Your iPad or whatever knows it's on the "ACME" SSID or whatever, and as you roam around your house, you'll get the strongest signal available. There are no spanning tree loops possible this way, no halving of bandwidth in diminishing returns, as with wireless bridges. It's a pretty neat and elegant setup.

I'll give that a try. It seems perfectly reasonable. By using this, can I turn on the radio on the FIOS Actiontech router, too, and set it up using this same scheme? Right now the Actiontech, Linksys, and AEBS all have different SSIDs. If they all have the same, and the same security/password/etc., but on different channels, they will all "see" only one wireless network, correct?

One brand might implement security differently, or some other difference might cause incompatibility. But then again, it could work flawlessly. And yes, most computers/tablets will see a single named SSID instead of 3. At that point, the pc/tablet is responsible for choosing the best and closest signal, and irrespective of which radio it associates with, it's sending the same negotiation parameters and credentials to any of the 3 radios.

Since you're using different brands of AP, you might want to look deep into the settings to make sure everything is as same-same as possible. Check that security is all AES-based, or all TKIP-based, but not both. Id also make sure SSID isolation is set the same on all, if possible. And of course, they all need to operate in the same band--2.4GHz or 5GHz. If all of this sounds like a tall order, it probably isn't. I'd think there'd be a good chance to find equivalent settings on all the access points. Good luck.

I have seen this in the past. Apple Air Ports will not work properly in the vicinity of certain wireless home phones. You can try to change the channel on the Air Port, but if it doesn't work, you can re-position the phone, and put it in a place where it will not interfere.