time to upgrade the 2nd generation apple airport express

It appears I’m not getting any sort of 802.11N benefit with my 5 year old 2nd generation apple airport extreme. I thought you could get up to 130Mbps. I can only think that there is a good amount of wireless interference on the 2.4Ghz spectrum. Performance really dropped 30ft away in another room with a few walls in the way. I think getting a dual band router will improve performance, especially if I can use the xbox on the 802.11A range. I would like to look to utilize the xbox360 as a TV tuner..but I really really do not want to run cat5e around the place. I currently can only run the airport extreme in either 2.4 or 5ghz, and the oldish airport express only supports 2.4ghz.

with my LAN connected PC doing a local iperf test

$ iperf -c 10.0.1.13
————————————————————
Client connecting to 10.0.1.13, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
————————————————————
[ 3] local 10.0.1.13 port 23572 connected with 10.0.1.13 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 5.30 GBytes 4.55 Gbits/sec

from my mbp > my desktop via 802.11N (B/G)

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 35.9 MBytes 30.0 Mbits/sec

from my mbp > my desktop via 802.11N (A)

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 57.4 MBytes 48.1 Mbits/sec

from readynas to my pc via gigabit ethernet LAN:

READYNAS:~# iperf -c 10.0.1.13
————————————————————
Client connecting to 10.0.1.13, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 21.8 KByte (default)
————————————————————
[ 5] local 10.0.1.250 port 3420 connected with 10.0.1.13 port 5001
[ 5] 0.0-10.0 sec 127 MBytes 107 Mbits/sec

from my PC > readynas over gigabit ethernet LAN

[ 3] local 10.0.1.13 port 23672 connected with 10.0.1.250 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 31.7 MBytes 26.5 Mbits/sec

from my work win7 laptop > desktop PC via apple aiport express LAN interface (next room over)

$ iperf -c 10.0.1.13
————————————————————
Client connecting to 10.0.1.13, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
————————————————————
[ 3] local 10.0.1.45 port 1316 connected with 10.0.1.13 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 10.2 MBytes 8.52 Mbits/sec

from my work win7 laptop > desktop PC via 802.11N(B/G) (next room over)

$ iperf -c 10.0.1.13
————————————————————
Client connecting to 10.0.1.13, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
————————————————————
[ 3] local 10.0.1.46 port 1389 connected with 10.0.1.13 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 28.0 MBytes 23.4 Mbits/sec

from my work win7 laptop > desktop PC via 802.11N(B/G) (directly next to airport extreme)

$ iperf -c 10.0.1.13
————————————————————
Client connecting to 10.0.1.13, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
————————————————————
[ 3] local 10.0.1.46 port 1450 connected with 10.0.1.13 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 71.7 MBytes 60.1 Mbits/sec

Bacara Resort, Santa Barbara – Watch out for the TAR!



Bacara resort, originally uploaded by Declan!.

My mother flew into town to see my son and to give Rose and I a night off. So we decided to to go to The Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara. We finally had a good nights sleep, and it was a nice birthday present for Rose. The resort and spa was beautiful, and the service was impeccable.

The one thing I could not believe was that the beach was covered in oil and tar!!!!!!!!!! Anyone walking barefoot on the beach had to scrub their feet to remove the tar. Apparently the Santa Barbara channel has been seeping tar for a few hundred years! So the unfortunate side effect of this is that besides the tar on the beach, the air didn’t smell very fresh. Reminded me of someone paving blacktop on a driveway.

http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?id=2603

http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2007/09/