Airport Extreme / Express: join/extend/wireless/ethernet

Greetings,
I have large house with a bunch of rooms, two home offices, 12+ devices(Mac's, iPad's, iPhone's, PC's & printers) that connect daily.
I have two Airport Extreme's (5th Gen).  Primary is downstairts in office hooked directly to cable modem. Second Extreme is upstairs setup to extend Primary network hooked up through Gigabit Ethernet.  I get good coverage all over the house with this configuration.  Near each base station I get as high as 450 mbs on my 2011 MBP, none of my Mac's get below 144 mbs anywhere in the house.  You may be thinking this is all good so what is the question?
My question relates to my 3 Airport Express's (latest model)  that are used primarily for AirPlay Music (works great).  Right now all 3 Aiport Express's are configured to join my wireless network.  I recently had some work done at the house and had Gigabit ethernet drops put in most rooms of my house.
Would there be any benefit in hooking up my Express's to Ethernet to extend the coverage and make it even stronger.
I have read that an optimal wireless network should be as simple as possible to reduce overhead, etc.  Would this help, hurt, or have no implact on my network performance?  If I could boost my wireless speed in my weaker zones from 144 to + I will get the cables and make it happen.  If not, I will just keep it as it is.
Thanks for any input, advice, experience.

I thought about that and was very suprised the AEx did not support Gigabit (I guess it has been out a while with not update).  Thinking along those lines, it wouldn't buy me anything and may slow things down.  Guess we can hope they release a new AEx with Gigabit support.
I know there are many other range extenders out there that I could buy and would suport Gigabit but I'm not sure how well they would play with all my Apple Network gear (plus my range is fine just wanting close to base station speed)?  My question now is should I just leave it alone, would I really see any gains in speed, and would it tax my network performace if I added extra gear anyway.
Leaning towards just leaving it alone - 144mbs in the worst spot is still pretty good I guess
Thanks for the fast response!

Similar Messages

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    Message was edited by: macman60

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