Is there a solution to extreme congestion?

Question

At our office building, there are approximately 150 businesses, all of them small, the majority of which are using wireless for their internet access, and I would venture to guess that a majority of those are using airports. My company was using an Airport Extreme (802.11n) but access to the internet was so slow that we had to go back to using ethernet connections from the router to the computers (5 in all). All wireless channels had too many users to count. My question is: is there any way around this? Is there any possible way to go back to wireless in this situation and have connection in normal time, whether it means using the Extreme or changing to something else?
Thank you in advance,
Peter

Answer 1

I've read that the Ipad is configured to do so, but that the iphones are not.
That's correct. Maybe you could just use the 3G network for the iPhone since it cannot connect at 5 GHz.
I looked at Airport Utility and under Radio mode for the 802.11n, there was an 802.11n 5GHz only option in the drop down menu. Wouldn't this turn the Extreme into a single router?
No, it only assigns a different name to the 5 GHz network. The 2.4 GHz network will still be broadcasting using the "normal" wireless network name.
Maybe this will help....By default, both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks have the +same wireless network name+. Two networks broadcasting with the same name. Computers will automatically connect to the network that has the best signal.
It's useful to assign a different name to the 5 GHz network if you want to "force" a computer to only connect to that band and not choose which band to use.
But, the 2.4 GHz network will still always be operating (and probably causing more issues in the crowded environment). You cannot turn one band on and the other off, etc. on a dual band AirPort Extreme. They are both on at all times.
In a way, this is a drawback of the dual band versions.