Yesterday I restructured our home network to included separate 802.11n and 802.11b/g wireless segments. I had two main reasons for doing this:
- Over the last several months there has been a wireless boom in our neighborhood. Where I once could pick-up three wireless networks I now, on a good night, can locate six to eight. These wireless networks are spread across the main 1, 6 and 11 channels of the 2.4ghz band.
- My wife uses of her iMac to work remotely part of the time and it’s critical that it has a steady and stable Internet connection. There’s no ethernet wiring where her iMac is located–it’s completely dependent on the wireless connection. Connecting to a router in mixed mode (802.11 b/g/n) has resulted in random disconnects and sometimes slow Internet response. This could be from the mix mode rate shifting or interference from the neighborhood Wifi on the same channels.
My chosen solution was to install an Apple Airport Extreme base station as the main router with it providing wireless access for only 802.11n on the 5ghz band and demote my D-Link DIR-655 router to function as a 802.11b/g wireless access point, still at 2.4ghz (see diagram below). All DNS and DHCP requests sent to the DIR-655 forwarded to the Airport Extreme base station.
The Apple Airport Extreme base station is one of the few wireless routers currently providing support for 802.11n at 5ghz. All the neighborhood wifi is operating on 2.4ghz so there’s no possibility of their networks stepping on our 802.11n signal.
There’s also no stepping down of throughput at the Airport Extreme router due to slower 802.11b/g clients. I would drop support of 802.11b/g completely but I still have a few older devices.
With this new wireless network structure the iMac is seeing a consistent 270-300 Mbits/sec throughput rate and all drops or disconnects have stopped.
All 802.11b/g clients will still get the same throughput as before.
The wife is happier and it was easy to set-up…a win-win solution. ;-)
You are the techno-guru! :-)
I would like to do almost the same thing, Can you tell me how you configured your D-Link to still be in DHCP-mode, and send all traffic to the Airport?
thanks!
@Michael Thomas: DHCP is disabled on the D-Link Router. The Airport handles all DHCP request so no DHCP function is required for the D-Link.
@Michael Thomas: Generally, 1) you use the first WiFi (Airport Extreme) as a router/Access Point (DHCP-enabled) connected to the second WiFi (D-Link) as an Access Point (DHCP-disabled). 2) AEBS Ethernet port to D-Link Ethernet port (NOT the WAN port)