Airport Express & WiFi Issues

I currently use two, late 1st generation Apple Airport Expresses a/b/g/Draftn to stream music around my home. I am consistently having dropout of signal with the music being interrupted momentarily or at times, slightly longer. This happens whether the music is being streamed from the web or being played wireless from iTunes. Doing a Speedest I frequently can only obtain half of what I am able to achieve wired. Wireless speed is in the region of 32Mbps and wired around 68Mbps.

I am wondering if the problem is WiFi interference, if the Airport Expresses are not up to the job or I need to add an Airport Extreme to 'boost' the signal. Perhaps something else?I should mention that I have tried altering WiFi channels to no effect and that my home is a small two bedroom.

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated as it is now impossible to listen to music using WiFi.

Is it possible to (temporarily) use a wired connection to one of the A-Es? It would at least confirm (or eliminate) wireless as the source of the problem.

I've got a 50m length of Cat5e for this sort of problem, for the few quid it cost me it saved a lot of messing about!

I wouldn't think the speed is a problem, even high quality audio doesn't need more than a few hundred kilobits/sec.

Thanks for getting back so swiftly. In my case, I am using a Billion 8800nl (wireless switched off) wired directly to one of the Airport Expresses. The other AE is used as an extender.

Any further thoughts?

Is the extender using wireless to extend or a wire? If it is using wireless then you should be able to plug a cable into the Ethernet socket on to the tester as that would show what speed the connection between the plugs is capable of (it could be that it is the wireless link between them that is slowing it down).

If you connect by wireless close to the wired airport express do you get higher speeds?

Also - if you turn off the airport expresses and just connect to the 8800NL via wireless what speed do you get?

Edited by ian72 (Thu 31-Mar-16 10:26:27)

In reply to a post by dsch:

Any further thoughts?

Only the general one that if you have wireless anywhere in the connection, the first thing to do is to (wherever possible) eliminate it as a possible cause- imo it's a device of Beelzebub!

Then you can start following the signal in whatever way is convenient to see where it drops out.

It's only a device of Beelzebub because people just expect it to be perfect and don't understand the physics involved (even at a basic level). Given the correct expectations WiFi is a convenient connection but whenever an option for wired is available it should be used.

Can you use something like WiFi Explorer to see if a nearby WiFi is interfering? If you can, try manually changing everything to Channel 13.

In reply to a post by ian72:

but whenever an option for wired is available it should be used.

Precisely.

The trouble with the physics of wifi is that it doesn't (and, in practice, can't) allow for all the possible effects of interference, environment etc. A piece of foil-backed plasterboard that you don't even know is there may cause no trouble at all, until you move the router a couple of feet.

When it works properly it's great, but when it doesn't� that's what I meant by the Beelzebub reference.

When it works properly it's great, but when it doesn't� that's what I meant by the Beelzebub reference.

Are you saying Beelzebub is great when he/she is working properly? (unfortunately there is no devil smiley on this forum)

In reply to a post by ian72:

Are you saying Beelzebub is great when he/she is working properly?

If I'm building something and I accidentally cut myself I always regard it as a good omen- I've made a blood sacrifice to the gods of technology.

Draw your own conclusions