NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Mac community

Hi guys,

Just bought an iPhone 1.1.4 from Jens (great service!) a few days back, and an Airport Extreme for wi-fi, of course. Since I have a prepay account, it could get expensive - as later results proved.

But the main problem is the limited range. I can get iPhone wi-fi connected, walk out my home office and down the hall 5-7m with the connection on, then it might drop as I return. Or it doesn't connect at all even though I'm sitting a couple of metres away in direct line. And now it drops every couple of minutes in the middle of loading a page, which means unless I'm quick and exit, it goes to wallet-crunching GPRS.

I've checked all the usual things like interference (light), steel in room etc (not much), neighbours (none showing), and can't figure it out.

When I bought the Airport I had grand visions of being able to walk through any part of my home on 4 levels to the lounge about 30m away using the iPhone... or maybe buy an Asus EEE PC as well. But if I can't get more than a room's length away then it's near-useless to me. Any ideas?

There are a few options you can play around with in the Airport Utility. I assume you have the latest firmware installed. I think the utility checks this by default.

Once you've clicked Manual Setup for your Airport Extreme, click the Wireless tab, and have a look at those options.
1. Make sure you select the 802.11n (802.11b/g compatible) option. This fixed problems my flatmate was having with his Windows machine.
2. Try selecting a different Channel for the wireless to use.
3. Under the Wireless Options button, try different Multicast rates. I think the higher the rate, the shorter the range is.
4. Make sure the transmit power is at 100%.
5. Try ticking the Interference Robustness option.
6. Make sure you have New Zealand selected under the country option.

And of course you need to reboot the Airport every time you make a change.

I hope one of these things helps.

Hey, thanks knight556! Works just fine now with your suggestions.

I had all the options you suggested 'on' except Interference Robustness option. But I also manually changed the channel which was set to auto, and dropped the Multicast rate from 2 Mbps to 1 Mbps.

The result is a stable signal with a 20-30m range, and it's much faster downloading too. Very very happy now.

All I want now is a reasonable data plan. My current prepay $10-$11 per 1MB is bordering on the ridiculous, and I'm reluctant to commit to a long 1 or 2 yr plan in case something happens with the new iPhone/Vodafone deal.

Yeah I'd definitely wait until after July before making any long term decisions with your Vodafone plan.
Hopefully iPhone v.2 isn't too far away!

I was talking to a Mac store guy this morning after buying another Airport Extreme to cover the upstairs area.

He said the word is that it will be December before we see anything.

And he also said that his estimate there are 25,000 iPhones in New Zealand to date. That's a huge takeup for an 'unauthorised' product. I've no doubt that Steve Jobs will attain his 10 million sales target this year.