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iPhone won't show on new Mac.

Scotty,

Since I sent you this message the airport did correct itself.  It goes in and out.  When I am in the mancave where the airport is, it appears that I do not connect to this airport, but to the one in the upstairs office.  My transmit rate is 26.  Any reason why I do not connect to the airport that is closest to the computer and why the transmit rate is not near 130s?

By the way, now that the airport is not blinking yellow there are not error codes to report.  Eventhough the main airport is showing green it has the following 2 code:  Configuration over WAN and Double NAT.  Not sure if these are causing problems with my mancave airport.  

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

___________

So there are several things in play here. 1st, the 2 error codes have no bearing on this issue. The WAN error means you are allowed to adjust your router’s settings without being plugged in to it the Double NAT error means that two devices (the modem and the router) are trying to hand out IP addresses. This is fine in your case.

Now on to the meat of the issue. One thing that would be interesting to know would be what version of the expresses these are. The 802.11n version (most recent) have a different max transmit rate than the older 802.11g expresses. I prefer, in my own home, to eliminate the older g versions. In other words, updating the routers helps a lot. The N version express also has a better range as well as more bandwidth in your house. This is one explanation as to the different transmit rates seen in the options menu you’re probably observing. This also lends itself to explain the other issue. Your computer may seek out the 802.11n router downstairs above the slower less desirable g version right next to you. There are ways to have the computer forget which device it is connected to. The simplest is to toggle on/off the airport card via the menu bar. But you’ve probably already done that. This doesn’t solve anything, just gives the computer the opportunity to find the strongest signal. By the way, the only way to tell if the express is g or n is to use airport utility. The versions are identical physically.

Another factor to consider is location and physical interference of walls etc... Your computer wants to connect to the most reliable signal and certain construction can cause issues with this. As I recall, your mancave is quite a bit away and upstairs from the main router in the kitchen area. I believe we had an express or two in addition to the main router. There are other considerations if you’d like more details as to what could be going on (WDS setup etc...)

If you would like to reset the computer’s airport memory, there are files we can toss out if you’d like to explore that. Let me know and I’ll guide you through that if necessary.
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