Weakened AirPort Extreme Level with Tiger

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Bidleman

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After installing Tiger my AirPort Extreme signal level dropped from 4 bars to 2. And the PowerBook sits only 3 feet away. Have updated to Firmware 5.5.1 with no improvement. Never had this problem in Jaguar. Am I alone?
 
Two questions: 1) What happens when you move the powerbook into another room? 2) Are you connecting to a wireless router or another mac?

Also, does anyone know how to get more information from Darwin on signal strength? 'Five bars' is about one order of magnitude off what I would like to see from a signal strength report. I hope something in Darwin gives a more precise measurement.
 
Bidleman said:
After installing Tiger my AirPort Extreme signal level dropped from 4 bars to 2. And the PowerBook sits only 3 feet away. Have updated to Firmware 5.5.1 with no improvement. Never had this problem in Jaguar. Am I alone?
Click to expand...

After Tiger, I have 12 bars at 45 ft. I used to get 11 typically. Have you ever checked the seating of your card?
 
Weird, my reception seems to have gotten better, from 4 to 5 bars in my attic. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed in the router location and set up and my PB is still in the same place in the attic.

This could suggest the improved signal is a result of Tiger, but that doesn't make sense. I am an amateur, but as far as I can understand it, wifi reception is a combination of signal strength, surrounding interference and ability of hardware to pick the signal. Does the OS have anything to do with this?
 
I agree it is weird. I would not have thought that software will be a factor--unless it reads too high (or the old software read too low). I have seen others, besides us, say the same thing.
 
I've found that my airport strength has increased dramatically, from 1-2 bars to 2-3 bars, even with various doors shut inbetween the base station + dr bott aerial and my PowerBook.
 
okay, now this really intrigues me! :)

Can anybody explain in dummy's terms what the relationship is between the OS and signal strength, if indeed Tiger is the reason why people report changed signal strengths?
 
Hang on a minute! My airport signal strength is now at 4 (ie max) for most of the time. This really is a dramatic improvement, and is good for those of us who live in houses with thick walls...
 
After installing Tiger, my Airport signal is two bars (down from four) just six feet away from my Linksys.
 
Hm. Guess people really have different results. My reception is better with Tiger than with Panther. Tested at home (Buffalo AirStation) and at the office (Linksys). I get more bars on the same spot and can even move a bit further away from the base stations.

What the OS has to do with it? You can tweak a LOT of settings in a WiFi card (power consumption, search cycles etc.). There are utilities for PC's WiFi cards that let you set each and every bit, basically. Apple doesn't let us do that, but I'd say they've optimised the settings in Tiger.
 
My airport connection is very unreliable since I installed Tiger. I haven't changed anything else yet I can't use my AE anymore because the connection has become so flaky. It's at 4 bars for minutes then loses the connection altogether for just long enough to disconnect everything and the jumps back to 2 bars and 4 bars a coule of seconds later. The connection had been solid under 10.3.x all the way, usually 3-4 bars with barely no disconnects. Apple needs to fix this. I have tried all tricks that are suggested on the net but none of them helped.
 
After upgrading the firmware for my Linksys, Tiger crashed hard (complete freeze), which I've never had happen in X before. On reboot, I got nothing but a blue screen. Wiped harddrive and went back to Jaguar. Had further Airport issues (not seeing any networks, not recognizing airport card installed, crashes), but after a couple of reboots of everything, it's working again. For now.

Spoke with tech support. No known issues. Everything is supposed to have been fixed with 10.4.1. So...since only developers can issue bug reports, where do we go from here? There's obviously something still buggy going on for a minority of us. I may try the whole process of erasing and installing Tiger, again, with 10.4.1, but it's a scary proposition to waste another whole day on this update (I'm up to three days, at this point). Not really worth it for widgets and Garageband and minor under-the-hood adjustments.
 
I've had a similar problem with my Linksys Wireless G. However my airport express which had been connected via WDS so that I could stream music and connect my xbox to the internet, works just fine.

I wonder if it is some kind of problem between the upgrade to 10.4 and Linksys wireless routers. It must be since my airport express serving as a regular base station works great. And the linksys is supposed to have a greater range due to the antenna's

I am running 10.4.1 now and am still having trouble.

Is anyone else having a similar problem with any brand routers?
 
My airport connection and strength has remained strong with Tiger and new PB. Have you tried to play around with the channel settings? A friend had difficulty getting his Airport Base-station working in his apartment, until we finally got a channel to work.
 
OK, a couple of days after going back to Ethernet I decided to give Airport another chance. To my surprise, the Airport connection has been stable for a few days now even though I haven't changed anything since last time I used it. This is all a bit weird but I won't complain :D
 
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