Help! My wife is threating to call the Nerd Herd (AEBS-n)

Question

Hi,
I posted this a few months ago and didn't really get any responses and now my thread has been archived so I'm trying again. I'm really hoping that someone can help out on this one as it doesn't seem like it should be a huge problem, yet it's had me stumped for quite a while. My wife is threatening to call in Geek Squad but I know they'd just end up screwing things up more and charging us for the privilege.
Here's the scenario: I have a "U" shaped house that has an atrium in the middle. End to end on the house is maybe 50 ft. At one end, say the top left corner, of the "U" is an Airport Extreme Base Station-n ("AEBS-n"). At the middle of the right side of the "U" is my Apple TV and Tivo (collectively called "A/V gear"). The network connection is very unreliable between the AEBS-n and the A/V gear. I've iStumbled around the house and found that I have reasonable signal strength (~45%)until about 5 feet from the A/V gear at which point iStumbler will still see my network and report a signal strength of ~39% and my macBook drops the connection.
There are about 9 other networks in my immediate vicinity (according to iStumbler) with 4 belonging to our soon-to-be-defunct public WiFi service but I'm not seeing any channel interference.
I have two older Airport Express-g ("AE-g") which I used to try and configure as a WDS around the edge of the "U" by putting one in each bottom corner of the overall "U" yet I still find a similar problem. The weird thing is that the signal strength seems to get better but still the network connections all die in the area adjacent to the A/V gear.
When I move a little from the A/V gear I can reconnect to the network but I still have problems which can be evidenced by large rates of dropped packets between the laptop and the AEBS-n. The most reliable configuration seems to be removing the WDS environment entirely and disabling the two AE-g. In that configuration my AppleTV and Tivo Series-3 will ~sometimes~ be able to access the network but it's very inconsistent.
Other house details that may help-- there is a 2.4Ghz phone near the base station (VoIP via Vonage) and no microwaves in the house. There isn't really much else to cause interference, most of the exterior walls around the atrium are aluminum framed glass or wood siding.
At this point I've pretty much run out of ideas not to mention my Tivo just ran out of it's program guide. Now the wife is involved and wants it fixed. My geek credentials are on the line friends. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I didn't see this mentioned: what channels are your basestation using, and your neighboring wireless stations using? Have you tried changing the channel to be as far away from the others as is possible?
Many out of the box configs use channel 6, I've found that I have a lot of luck when using channel 1 in my area as most people don't change the channel from the default. iStumble should show you the channel, if not try to find a copy of KisMAC.
Also it is very telling that the signal so abruptly drops off around your AV gear. Do you have unshielded speakers? Any other sources of metal other than what you stated your walls are made of? Is there perhaps any small alcove or protrusion shapes to your walls in the area?
Wireless signal diffract and reflect when they hit metal objects. This creates numerous 'ghost' signals that the wireless gear has to attempt to filter out, which can cause a lot of issues. Since you have a lot of aluminum in your house, this could be exacerbating the issue.
Are your Tivo and ATV near a wall or far from it? Try moving them closer or farther from the wall, as this could affect how much of those ghost signals they could be receiving.
Give some of that stuff a try and see what happens.