Tag Archives: Airport Express

Extension to the networking family – Gigabit switch

I have been playing quite a lot of Battlefield Bad Company and did notice a small amount of lag when having the PS3 connected via wireless. I needed a quick fix in the form of the Zyxel GS105a 5-port gigabit switch:

I had a gigabit cable running from the office to the Airport Express to which the PS3 and any other wireless device in the lounge connects. The drawback of the Airport Express is that there are no additional ethernet ports and I was forced to connect everything wireless. This was never ideal, as media-streaming was not very reliable on the PS3.

There is nothing magic about a switch, other than getting something decent for a reasonable price. I got the Zyxel as it has many of the “business-type” switches for a mere R 600:
- 5 Auto-sensing 10/100/1000 Mbps Full-duplex (up to 2000Mbps on each port), Auto MDI/MDI-X Ports
- Intelligent power-saving technology (instead of providing full power to a port, the switch will detect the cable-length and output sufficient power per port)
- Full Wire-speed Store-and-Forward Technology Support
- Non-blocking switching technology (you will feel the lack of it, when you play and someone pulls down a DVD-movie)

Having done some tests, I did notice that latency has improved by 10-20ms — which is not much for the casual websurfer, but for a gamer this is the difference between winning or loosing a game.



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Airport Express: Manage access point remotely

Apple has released a number of updates today. In addition to the release of OSX 10.5.4 which fixes a number of performance issues on the 5Ghz wireless channels, the all important Airport 7.3.2 firmware update was released.

Will Apple generally does not disclose much information about Airport Express updates, the recent firmware seems to have resolved the issue where I was not able to manage the base-station once the access-point was placed in bridged mode. A number of people in the Apple forums experienced the same issues and should now be as ecstatic as I am.

The OSX 10.5.4 update includes improvements of iCal reliability when it comes to the software’s handling of meeting requests, cancellations, and syncing with the iPhone. To Dos can apparently be marked as private again, too. Safari has gotten a performance fix when loading secure web pages, and a number of issues with Spaces (such as application focus problems and dragging applications between different Spaces) have been fixed. Apple lists out these updates in its support document, and there are sure to be a slew of hidden ones buried in 10.5.4 as well.

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Airport Express: Extending your network (and stream iTunes from your NAS)

I was running my N-wireless network for months through my Belkin N1 router without a problem. The router is located in my office, connecting to an iBurst desktop modem and was connecting via a Gigabit connection to my PS3. As more people have moved into our estate, interference has now prevented to consistently push Wifi through the remainder of the house.

I had to get a quick fix in the shape of the Airport Extreme:

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