Increase AirportExtreme sensitivity?

[credo]

Hey guys,

I have a 12" iBook with a built in Airport Extreme wireless card. One thing I have noticed is that, on many occasions when my friend's windows-based laptops can connect to a wireless network, my iBook can't even pick up a signal. Even when I'm right up close to a base station, the signal strength isn't too great.

Is there any way I can increase the sensitivity of the card? Or do I need an external antenna?

Thanks

 

[Thank The Cheese]

Airport seems to be a funny thing. I've found that my iMac G5 with AirPort Extreme has trouble finding a signal when my iBook G3 with an old Airport card -- which is much farther away -- can pick up a signal no problems 100% of the time.

Sometimes, too, things like cordless phones can interfere with the signal. You can check the "Use Interface Robustness" option to counter-act this (it's in the drop-down menu if you click the little airport signal icon in the top-right of the screen).

The other thing I have found recently is that NOT installing the latest Airport update does wonders for my signal (appears as "Airport Update 2005-001" in Software Update). I had all kinds of infuriating trouble with my signal for months. I would get no signal at all when all other macs and PCs in the house could. I would loose a signal whenever I put my iMac to sleep and wake it up. Really annoying, and would happen almost every day.

Recently an evil font I (stupidly) installed completely screwed up my system and I had to re-install Mac OS X. I updated my system to 10.4.4, and updated all my other software but this time I DID NOT install the Airport update. And now, I have not had a problem with my signal strenth once in 2 weeks.

So I don't know. Maybe it wasn't the update.. it's certainly up for debate. Next time you do a complete re-install of Mac OS X maybe give it a try for a few days and see if it helps.


This site may help you also:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2005093011343164