William Mitchell's dashboard

Airport Extreme base station firmware 7.4.2 causes greatly reduced signal range, compared to either 7.4.1 or 7.3.2.

Upgrading the firmware reduces range to just 20 feet. This occurs when connecting from any kind of device (tested Mac, Windows XP, iPhone). Base station settings were identical in all cases.

We repeatedly upgraded and downgraded, to verify that the ONLY variable affecting range was the firmware version.

Several other base stations are in our neighborhood, so we wonder if 7.4.2 is less effective at handling interference.