iTunes disconnects from Aiport Express

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cseverance

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From iTunes, I select the proper airport express. Everything is fine, the music streams perfectly. After playing about half a dozen songs, iTunes stops streaming (the little "speaker" graphic to the left of the song that is playing no longer has the "))" graphic indicating it's playing). I then double click the selected song (or any other song) and everything is cool again. For another half dozen songs or so. Then I have to manually fire up iTunes again. Any ideas?
 
I would guess (first educated guess) that your AirPort Express is experiencing some kind of interference that is causing you to be disconnected from it.

Did you turn up the signal strength and all ?
 
The default is 100% signal, so if you don't know how to turn it up you never turned it down in the first place.

What about other devices like a wireess phone, microwave, electric motor or other interference-generating appliances either near your computer or your AP Express ?
 
- I have an Airport Base Station in the bottom floor of my house.
- Further away on the next floor in the kitchen (the furthest distance the airport base station signal reaches), I have an airport express set up to relay the internet.
- Even further away in the living room (furthest distance from the range of the airport express) i have yet another airport express which is relaying the internet from the kitchen express station.
- Each airport exress is set up to be a WDS remote base station.
- Each express also creates a wirless network (home router)

The problem that I run into is that the internet connection is amazing in the vicinity of the base station. Once you get to the express in the living room, the internet connection drastically drops. Why is this? Am i setting it up incorrectly?
 
Ooh yes that's not an efficient way to set up the routers.

You don't want each AP Express to assign IP addresses and be a home router, only the one that connects to the internet (basement I presume). You need to set up the first one (AirPort Base Station) as a WDS "primary base station" (in the WDS tab of the AirPort Admin Utility). Then check the box under that.

The extra ones you need only set up as WDSs ("remote access points") selecting your AirPort Express base station as the primary one. I've never configured an AirPort network with more than one relay so I assume the top floor one will take your second floor AirPort Express as the "principal access point"...
 
as i can tell, my network is set up as you say. i noticed that there is an option to make one of the airport express stations as a relay base station. "A relay base station is connected to the main base station and shares its Internet connection with remote and other relay base stations."
Should this be selected instead of 'remote base station.' being that it acts as a relay between the base station and the living room? Once i do that, it asks "to scan for base stations and wireless networks in range of your computer which you can use as WDS remote base station." Do I only select the main base station?
 
This is actually starting to look a little confusing, so I'm going to reference Apple's documentation which is actually quite good:

p. 50 said:
Setting Up a Wireless Distribution System (WDS)
When you connect base stations wirelessly in a WDS, you set up each base station as either a main base station, a remote base station, or, if you are using AirPort 3.1 or later, a relay base station. Note: If you are setting up AirPort Express to extend the range of your network using WDS, use the AirPort Setup Assistant. See “Extending the Range of an Existing AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express Network” on page 70.

A main base station is connected to the Internet and shares its connection with remote and relay base stations. A remote base station shares the main base station’s Internet connection. A relay base station shares the main base station’s Internet connection and transfers the connection to other remote or relay base stations. All three base station configurations (main, remote, and relay) can also share the main base station’s Internet connection with client computers wirelessly, or with Ethernet if the client computers are connected to the base station or Ethernet. When you set up base stations in a WDS, you need to know the AirPort ID of each base station. The AirPort ID is also known as the MAC address and is printed on the label on the bottom of the base station next to the AirPort ( ) symbol. To make it easier to set up a WDS, place all of the base stations on a table and plug them into a power supply. As part of the WDS setup process, you might consider giving all the base stations unique names, to make them easier to identify in the future.
Click to expand...

p. 70 said:
Extending the Range of an Existing AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express Network
You can use the AirPort Setup Assistant set up AirPort Express to extend the range of an existing AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express wireless network. Wireless computers can connect to the network and share the Internet connection, share files, and play network games. If you connect your AirPort Express to your home stereo, computers on your wireless network can use AirTunes to play music on the stereo from iTunes. If you connect a USB printer to your AirPort Express, all of the computers on the network can print to it. m Open the AirPort Setup Assistant. Follow the onscreen instructions to extend the range of your AirPort Express or AirPort Express network. Note: Extending the range of a wireless network using WDS may affect overall network performance.
Click to expand...

Download "Designing AirPort Networks" here as a PDF.

So, basically, use the AirPort Setup Assistant.

This may not solve your problem! I only guessed at first that multiple stations connecting together like that would naturally have some issues if not properly configured, but your network may in fact be properly configured.

The other thing to consider is if the problem lies with the stereo itself. If the connector from the AP Express to the amp is slightly loose it may terminate the audio stream (like trying to stream if there are no connected speakers) Just a thought.

Let us know how this turns out.
 
OK, so i reconfigured the settings. I have my main base station as is. Connected to the Cable Modem. Then for the AE in the kitchen, i have it set up as a Relay Station. It bounces the internet connection from the Main Base Station to the AE in the living Room. For the Living Room, i have it set up as a Remote Base Station. This seems to be working far better than before, which was the main base station with two remote stations. The Main to Relay to Remote works for now. Also, the internet connection does seem to slow down once it gets to the Living Room AE. It goes from about 3160.3 Kbps to 700 Kbps. 4.5 times slower?!?! WOW! Ok, a huge difference. I'll continue to work on it until the difference isn't so drastic.
 
So I did some more tweaking to the network. I increased the Multicast rate for the two AEs to 11. I also increased the Multicast rate for the base station to 5.5. Also, i turned off the interferrence robustness for all of the airports. This seems to increase the performance by two times. Now the internet connection in the living gets an average of 1500 Kbps. Still less than half of what the main base station puts out (average of 3250 Kbps), but far better than the original average of 700 Kbps.
Any other suggestions?
 
Slower than what the base station has makes sense since it has to relay, but is it slower than what you had previously in the living room ?

It's kind of a shocker to me that it would have slowed down by that much (or, really, at all perceptibly) after configuring the network according to Apple's specs.

And yeah, turning of interface robustness will get you some faster throughput at the trade off of possible packet loss, I think it's a good move.
 
I don't know much about the Express stations and what kinds of things you can configure with them, but I found an interesting little bit about channel use and interference. Is it possible to change channels on the Express stations? I know you can with the Extreme Base Station...

http://www.macintouch.com/wirelesslanreader28.html#jan27

It seems that using channels 1, 6 and 11 is optimal to eliminate interference, but I don't know if stations connected to the same network would experience interference... I guess they might, if they had to error-check the signal to make sure it wasn't picking up any destined for a different station.

Anyway, I hope that helps a little... perhaps the overlap of the channels is causing the signal to drop...

Also: when you said...
Further away on the next floor in the kitchen (the furthest distance the airport base station signal reaches)
Click to expand...
...it made me think that perhaps this is where the slow connection cause may be... if that relay station is at the very outer edge of the signal from the main base station, perhaps that station is the one struggling with the connection... is that one getting a weak signal from the base station?
 
Great suggestions ElDiablo. You can indeed select AirPort Express channels. I was thinking the same thing regarding the slow connection as well...
 
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