I have been working on my new dual wireless network, in essence creating two wireless networks on my home network, one pure 802.11n 5GHz and a 802.11g 2.4GHz for older legacy devices.
When I initially set up my 802.11n Airport Extreme I used the 802.11n b/g 2.4GHz radio mode so that both 802.11n and 802.11b/g devices could connect. I also left the channel on Automatic and it chose channel 6.
For the 802.11g network I was going to use the older UFO shaped Airport Extreme (having given up on my Airport Express). As I configured it this evening, I had some problems getting my wireless Canon MP600R to connect to it, so I changed the channel from 11 (which is the same channel) as a neighbour’s wireless network and put it on Automatic. It chose channel 13, and I thought this is going to be problematic, as though UK wireless devices can use 13 channels on the 2.4GHz spectrum, in the US you can only choose channels 1 through 11. Some manufacturers only make a single device for both the US and UK markets, so these would not be able to connect to a wireless base station using channel 13. So I went in again and changed the channel to channel 2.
What happened next was weird, basically it stopped broadcasting.
I could see it was okay in the Airport Utility, as I was connected to the 802.11n wireless network and the older Airport Extreme was hard wired into that. However I could not see (on a few devices) the 802.11g wireless network.
I set it back to Automatic and it was there again.
I then decided to change the channel on the 802.11n Airport Extreme so that I could free up channel 6 and (hopefully) the older 802.11g Airport Extreme would then automatically choose channel 6 as its Automatic channel.
Well imagine my annoyance and surprise when I changed the channel on the 802.11n base station, it too stopped broadcasting!
Changed it back to Automatic and all was fine again.
Why I have to have Automatic as my channel choice I don’t know.
Why not one but both base stations stopped broadcasting when I chose a channel manually, I have no idea.
So for the moment I have the 802.11n network on channel 6 and the 802.11g network on channel 13.
Plan now is to turn off the 802.11n network and try and get the 802.11g Airport Extreme to choose channel 6!