Extending network via airport extreme N non dual band and airport expresses

Question

I have experimented with this a lot because I have 3 expresses and an extreme, one express is wired to my extreme in bridged G mode so my iphone can access my network of macs and the rest are running in N 2.4ghz joined to the extreme network as apposed to extending the network. It seemed to me that the 5ghz is much faster but has very poor range about half the range of the N so I run the network in 2.4ghz. Oddly the express I have bridged running in G mode seems to have more range than the N network. Whenever I tried to extend the network with an express in N 2.4ghz my performance went down and I could not really notice any difference in range. Perhaps this has changed with firmware updates of late so I am going to play with them some more. A side note is that when the express is in join mode to my extremes N 2.4 ghz network I can stream full HD video 1080i and 5.1 sound to my other macs. So when my MBP is hooked up to my AV
setup I can stream Eyetv recordings around the house. But when I extend the network the playback is choppy. It seems when you extend the data rate takes a dive. The odd thing to me is that it seems that the N network does not have any more range that the G express if not even a little less range. My extreme and bridged express are in the same place in my house and if I go outside on my deck there is no N and there is a little G and again if I extend the N network with an express it seems to make almost no difference in range and the transfer speeds seems to drop.
Any thoughts on how to improved N speed / range in extend mode would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The ethernet port is active with this settting, (assuming you enable it in AirPort Utility) which can be a plus in some installations, but I see no improvement in the "breadth" of the wireless network using the "Join" setting, at least when comparing it to the "extend" setting. Is this correct?
The AXn's feature to join a wireless network & have its Ethernet port enabled, as you already know, is known as ProxySTA.
Although a convenient feature indeed, it's not stellar as far as maximum bandwidth goes. As an example, the following would be typical "real life" throughput values (for the AXn's 2.4 GHz radio) based on the AXn's configuration:
o Router: Wired-to-wireless: 85 Mbps
o WDS: Wireless-to-wireless: 33-39 Mbps (Note: Extended would be closer to the Router value)
o ProxySTA: Wireless-to-wired: 26-35 Mbps
Unfortunately, ProxySTA is the "worst" of the bunch.
I have to believe that a lot of the confusion between "join" and "extend" is occurring because the "extend" option is not available in the auto setup using AirPort Utility. Aren't there a lot of users out there configured to "Join" when they think they are "extending"?
No doubt the "Manual Setup" function of the AirPort Utility still needs a bit of improvement as it does tend to confuse folks. Similar, would be the differences between "Extend" & a "WDS" as both are types of WDS.