Murphy has been keeping an eye on threads in Apple Discussions about firmware updates to Airport base stations. Problems with the 7.6.3 update aren’t universal. It seems the people who are having trouble are using more than one Apple router.

The issues are somewhat varied. Some report basic connectivity problems and many report a significant slowdown on their network.

But the main reason I’m posting is to point out a couple of Apple Support documents I’d never seen before, referenced by Vijay S on the Apple Discussions support site. The articles address setting up a roaming network. Roaming means you have multiple base stations, and your devices automatically connect to whichever one has the best signal without your intervention. Vijay points out that setting up a roaming network might not be as intuitive as you’d expect. I’d have to say I agree.

When I extended my wireless network I referenced a book I reviewed a long time ago, Taking Control of Your 802.1n Network by the incomparable Glenn Fleishman. If you’re interested in fine-tuning your Apple-based network you should grab this book. The latest edition includes updates covering changes to the Airport Utility and Mountain Lion.

The two Apple documents referenced by Vijay are :
Extending the range of your wireless network by adding additional Wi-Fi base stations
and
Setting up and Configuring a roaming network (802.11 a/b/g/n)

One point that gets some emphasis: If you can use Ethernet cable to extend your network you should. When we had our kitchen renovated last year I finally got an Ethernet cable running to the back of the house. My main Airport Extreme base station was upstairs toward the front of the house. Now I have coverage in the back of the house as well via an Airport Express wired into my network.

The key thing I learned when reading the Glenn Fleishman book was making sure your wireless networks have the same ssid name, password, and security settings. The only exception in my case is that I’m running both 5 and 2.4ghz networks. The 5ghz networks have different names than the 2.4 ghz networks because you probably have a reason for picking one over the other.

Some people prefer to lump their 5 and 2.4ghz networks into one name; you can read up on that in this Ars Technica article. Personally I agree with this comment so I can easily identify which band I’m connected to.

With two base stations serving up wireless networks named and secured the same way my wireless devices can roam from one base station to the other without the user noticing. It’s great.