Hi -
I'm experiencing what appears to be a weak signal between my Airport card in my 2.0 GHz iMac G5 20" and a new Linksys WRT54GC compact G router. This router has an internal antenna.
Physically the iMac is located in our dining room, and the router is located in a computer armoire in the kitchen, which is the adjacent room with a doorway between the two rooms that has no door. Just a couple of nights ago, the signal strength dropped to nothing, so I took the router out of the armoire so that there were no obstructions, and the signal strength never came back up. If it matters, I was in the middle of downloading a huge video file over bittorrent.
The signal appears to be weaker on my Windows XP laptop than with a Linksys B router I previously owned that had 2 external antennae, so it appears that there is definitely an issue with the router. But the signal strength was never very great between the B router and the Mac -- I never got full signal -- which is why I bought a new router in the first place, whereas I got excellent signal strengths through 2 walls with my laptop.
I'm wondering if I have an Airport card that needs to be replaced, or if I just made a bad choice with the router. Are there any diagnostics that I can run to verify whether the Airport card is good and what kind of throughput I should be getting? Are there any Airport settings that I can try? Also, there as a broadband optimizer package on macupdate.com, and I was wondering if that might make a difference.
I'm a fairly new Mac convert, and I'm totally unfamiliar with all the things that I could check to make sure I'm getting full signal strength on my Mac.
This may all be moot soon since I'm going to be relocating the Mac to the armoire and hard-wiring it to the router as soon as I finish kicking the Windows box that lives there to the curb.
Thanks,
-- phil --
I'm experiencing what appears to be a weak signal between my Airport card in my 2.0 GHz iMac G5 20" and a new Linksys WRT54GC compact G router. This router has an internal antenna.
Physically the iMac is located in our dining room, and the router is located in a computer armoire in the kitchen, which is the adjacent room with a doorway between the two rooms that has no door. Just a couple of nights ago, the signal strength dropped to nothing, so I took the router out of the armoire so that there were no obstructions, and the signal strength never came back up. If it matters, I was in the middle of downloading a huge video file over bittorrent.
The signal appears to be weaker on my Windows XP laptop than with a Linksys B router I previously owned that had 2 external antennae, so it appears that there is definitely an issue with the router. But the signal strength was never very great between the B router and the Mac -- I never got full signal -- which is why I bought a new router in the first place, whereas I got excellent signal strengths through 2 walls with my laptop.
I'm wondering if I have an Airport card that needs to be replaced, or if I just made a bad choice with the router. Are there any diagnostics that I can run to verify whether the Airport card is good and what kind of throughput I should be getting? Are there any Airport settings that I can try? Also, there as a broadband optimizer package on macupdate.com, and I was wondering if that might make a difference.
I'm a fairly new Mac convert, and I'm totally unfamiliar with all the things that I could check to make sure I'm getting full signal strength on my Mac.
This may all be moot soon since I'm going to be relocating the Mac to the armoire and hard-wiring it to the router as soon as I finish kicking the Windows box that lives there to the curb.
Thanks,
-- phil --