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Mac users - Airport signal strength/connection speed
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[Deleted User]
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Any Mac users out there know whether the Airport status bars in the top right of your screen relate to the signal strength from your router or to your connection speed?
I've recently been getting just one bar on the Airport icon and pitifully slow speeds. A call to Tiscali resulted in me changing the channel of my router, but most of the other channels only push this status icon up to halway and the average speed, as tested on SpeedTest is about 1,200kbps, about six times slower than my connection at work.
Tiscali said that if the problem persists, something might be interfering with my router. But shouldn't changing the router's channels have addressed that? Are my slow speeds not a problem at their end?
I've recently been getting just one bar on the Airport icon and pitifully slow speeds. A call to Tiscali resulted in me changing the channel of my router, but most of the other channels only push this status icon up to halway and the average speed, as tested on SpeedTest is about 1,200kbps, about six times slower than my connection at work.
Tiscali said that if the problem persists, something might be interfering with my router. But shouldn't changing the router's channels have addressed that? Are my slow speeds not a problem at their end?
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Comments
The bars indicate signal strength and indirectly speed. The lower the signal the slowerthe connection most of the time.
To get an accurate speed test perform one whilst cabled directly from the STB or Router to your Mac and whilst every other item on your systems (Printers, other machines etc) is turned off.
Then if there's any difference in Wireless speed vs. Wired speed it's to do with your environment.
Do you have DECT phones, Video Senders. How many other wireless networks are there.
There's a Mac application (Search for Mac os x stumbler in google) which will show you the relative strengths of the signals it finds and log the channel numbers. You can use this information to find the quiestest channel. Remember that there is an area around each channel that overlaps with it's neightbours so you're most likely to find people using 1,6/7, 11
Try these and if that doesn't work there's always the option of trying 3 and 9 or even the others.
As for other equipment, my Airport picks up two other neighbouring networks and we also have a cordless phone aand two sets of baby monitors. Could these be interfering.
Back to one bar again this morning, which allows for passable web browwsing but isn't enough to transmit net radio to my stereo speakers, one of my main reasons for going wireless in the first place.
Ahhhh! notorious for wireless problems.
You could, if babies are safe, turn all these wireless devices off and see what effect it has on your signal strength
At present, it's only finding my network, but it *is* coming up as a weak signal (Strength = 30).