airport express and TC

Yeah, it'll work fine as long as you don't have your Extreme set to broadcast N-only. Default is for mixed mode with G compatibility.

Arkangil said:

I have a 1TB Time Capsule at home running a wireless N network. If I buy the older Airport Express that only has b/g, can it still connect, just at the lower speeds?

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As blevins321 wrote, an older .11g Express can connect to a new Time Capsule/Airport Extreme as long as it isn't set to N-only.

Arkangil said:

My TC is upstairs, and I am setting up my home theater receiver in my basement. It has an ethernet port but no wifi. I'm thinking if I can just hook up an express to a plug, and run a short ethernet cable to the receiver, I am good to go, but I want to make sure the b/g can still connect to my N network, just at the slower speed.

If I got the newer express, it would extend my network, which would be fine, but not necessary, since the TC seems to provide good quality in the basement anyway. So I don't really need the extension function.

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Ethernet is another issue though. The newer Express can effortlessly bridge Ethernet to your wireless network, while the older Express can't. You would have to reconfigure the wireless network and mess with WDS (which is something you do not want to do, trust me).

Just get the newer .11n Express, it is worth it.

Arkangil said:

If I got the newer express, it would extend my network, which would be fine, but not necessary, since the TC seems to provide good quality in the basement anyway. So I don't really need the extension function.

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as itickings said, you don't want to do that if you don't need the range, one "feature" of using extend that isn't really publicized is the fact that it cuts your speed roughly in half, as the repeater has to talk to both the main router, and your device.

in order of speed from fastest to slowest
802.11N only (5GHz) - with wide channels
802.11N only (5GHz)
802.11N only (2.4GHz)
802.11N (B/G compatible) (also 2.4GHz)

if you have a B/G device join, it will slow your whole network down, your N devices will still be faster than the G ones, but not as fast as if they are on a pure N network.

iPhone4 does have N, but only 2.4
iPad2 has 5GHz N.

the 5GHz versions do not go through things as well, so if you have a lot of walls between where you use your devices and the router, you'll get better range with the 2.4 versions.

also depending on what you're streaming to your home theatre, you'll need all the speed you can get