Robustness of Airplay?

[Twill]

Hi,

I am looking to set up wireless capabilities in different rooms in my house, and now that I have an iThingy, I was thinking of using Airplay as the main vehicle for this.

What's made me think twice is that I am currently struggling to wirelessly stream internet radio via my TuneIn app from the router downstairs to my iPhone when upstairs or at the back of the house.

I'm therefore beginning to wonder if a propriotry system using a plugin transmitter, ala Arcam or AudioPro, whilst in some ways a bit more fiddly, might actually be much more robust.

Has anyone got any experience of whether Wireless N should be enough to sustain Airplay all over an average 3-bed home? I was hoping to stream lossless, but am thinking that if my router can't cope with internet radio via TuneIn, when no one else is using the network, it probably won't manage one or two lossless Airplay streams.

Any thoughts? Just wondering if my environment is especially bad in some way, or whether this is usual performance.

(Don't fancy Sonos by the way.)

 

[Paul.]

Wireless N is a pretty ambiguous term unfortunately, as it doesn't tell you the area over which you can achieve that speed. I had an N router from talk talk and it's absolute junk, replaced it with a borrowed four year old AirPort Extreme and all my airplay problems went away. If you could let us know what router you are using, how far it is from your airplay devices and if it is stone or plasterboard walls and how many of them, that would be a big help.

 

[MajorFubar]

How do you find wireless generally from your router? That will determine to an extent how successful Airplay will be. I had to give up wireless almost completely in my house* because the airwaves got just too crowded; at one point our computers could detect upto 19(!) networks within range at any one time and it just wasn't working. Changing the channel on the router only made things worse

*our phones connect via WiFi, as do the kids' DSis and their Wii, but all the computers use homeplugs.

 

[Paul.]

Major, have you looked at a dual band router? The 5ghz spectrum is much less contested.

 

[Twill]

Hi,

Thanks for the swift responses.

The router's a Netgear N600 3700, which I understood to be pretty powerful range-wise. In reality it doesn't seem to perform any better regarding range than my old D-Link 802.11G router from about 8yrs ago. I have my iPhone 5 on the 5ghz band, which actually seems to report a weaker signal than the 2.4, which I was surprised by, but I've heard it's generally clearer so I went with that anyway.

The house is a Victorian terrace. Router's downstairs in the lounge behind a sofa. the bedroom is directly above. The kitchen - where I also have issues, is two walls away horizontally, at the back of the house. Being Victorian I'm guessing they're brick walls.

Thanks again.

 

[The_Lhc]

What about your neighbours, how many wireless networks do they have impinging on your space?

 

[chebby]

I can only say what works here...

Virgin Media 20Mbps (cable)

Apple AirPort Extreme 802.11n (1st gen one, over 5 years old and too frightened to replace it because it works so well.)

5m Belkin Ethernet cable to Marantz M-CR603.

iPhone 5 for majority of AirPlay use.

I have never tested the extremes of the range, but it reaches - without any dropouts* - an upstairs bedroom (PC) and the spare room next to the living room (iMac where I keep all my ALAC lossless 'masters') and the conservatory (about 35 feet away) when we used to have a Pure Evoke Flow out there (not AirPlay but still streaming via wi-fi). This is in an average sized, Edwardian, three bedroomed house with solid brick walls and thick floors/ceilings.

Our Humax is hard wired (ethernet) so there isn't much else - that's wireless - going on in the same room.

The range could be extended with a strategically placed AE (in another room) but the need has never arisen.

*No dropouts at all in the 20 months I have used AirPlay (with the Marantz) and no problems with wi-fi in general in the 5+ years we have had Virgin Media cable and the AirPort Extreme.

 

[MajorFubar]

Major, have you looked at a dual band router? The 5ghz spectrum is much less contested.

Nah...CBA...I went down the homeplug route instead, and seeing that I don't use Airplay much it's not a major issue.

 

[Twill]

What about your neighbours, how many wireless networks do they have impinging on your space?

I only pick up about 4 other networks when looking around.

 

[The_Lhc]

What about your neighbours, how many wireless networks do they have impinging on your space?

I only pick up about 4 other networks when looking around.

Only? If they're strong enough that's enough to cover the entire available frequency spectrum, which may well explain why you're having problems. Get yourself a wi-fi analyser app for your phone and find out how strong they are and more importantly, what channels they're on.

 

[chebby]

Only? If they're strong enough that's enough to cover the entire available frequency spectrum, which may well explain why you're having problems. Get yourself a wi-fi analyser app for your phone and find out how strong they are and more importantly, what channels they're on.

Two other networks showing right now.

Both are on a completely different channel (13) and both are 'very low' (our beacon strength = 158,000 mWatt x 10^6 and the others are 0.0001 and 0.06 mWatt x 10^6). Their beacon quality is 1 and 2 percent and ours is 99 or 100 percent.

I know for a fact that neither of our closest neighbours have any network at all, so these must be at least two houses away.

I'll check again after 6pm to see what the picture is then. (Although we don't have any problems, this is quite interesting*.)

*In a nerdy kind of way.

 

[Paul.]

If you want nerdy fun, try building a parabolic reflector from tinfoil and card and seeing how it effects your signal strength

 

[Twill]

Only? If they're strong enough that's enough to cover the entire available frequency spectrum, which may well explain why you're having problems. Get yourself a wi-fi analyser app for your phone and find out how strong they are and more importantly, what channels they're on.

Two other networks showing right now.

Both are on a completely different channel (13) and both are 'very low' (our beacon strength = 158,000 mWatt x 10^6 and the others are 0.0001 and 0.06 mWatt x 10^6). Their beacon quality is 1 and 2 percent and ours is 99 or 100 percent.

I know for a fact that neither of our closest neighbours have any network at all, so these must be at least two houses away.

I'll check again after 6pm to see what the picture is then. (Although we don't have any problems, this is quite interesting*.)

*In a nerdy kind of way.

Which app did you use for this Chebby? Read something somewhere saying Apple had banned analyzer apps.

Could be an interesting point though. didn't think 4 networks around me was that many, will be interesting to see how strongly they're interfering with my space if I can find a good simple analyser for iOS.

 

[amcluesent]

Predicting wi-fi performance is pretty much impossible. However, weak streaming on a < 320kpbs radio station is not encouraging, although iPhone RF aerial engineering is notoriously lame.

You could try some directlional/hi-gain antenna on the base station or just go for homeplugs although they have problems with combi boilers in the circuit.

 

[daveh75]

I'd recommend using a PC/Mac rather than a smartphone/tablet to analyze networks as you'll probably find the radios/antenna are better (at least IME).

I use inSSIDer, it's free/open source and easy to use...

http://www.metageek.net/support/downloads/