Using Access control with WDS

[doug.hall]

Does anyone know how to set up WDS with access control? I have two Airport expresses set up as a WDS. All works fine until I try to limit access to the WDS via the access control settings using airport admin utility. When I try to limit acces to just my laptop the remote airport express (not the main AE connected to my modem) stops working correctly.

anyone got any ideas?

[devman]

I've not done this, so this is guessing.

Access control is done by the MAC address of whatever the client is (e.g. a laptop, a desktop, or a remote base station, etc.). WDS is also done by MAC address. i.e. the Main Base Station is told the MAC address of the remote base station (and possibly vice versa - I don't recall).

I'm guessing then if you go to Access Control on the main base station and only put in the MAC address of your laptop, then you have excluded the remote base station from connecting to the main base station.

Try entering the MAC address of the remote base station as well as your laptop's MAC address into the Access Control on the main base station.

[doug.hall]

[QUOTE=devman]
I'm guessing then if you go to Access Control on the main base station and only put in the MAC address of your laptop, then you have excluded the remote base station from connecting to the main base station.

Thanks for the reply. That's what I thought but it didn't work. However, I've sorted it now and it's much simpler than I imagined. All you have to do is repliicate the Access control list on each Airport express. So in this instance I needed to put the MAC address of my powerbook on both Airport Expresses. Once I did this it worked fine.

Now all I need to do is attach my new ethernet external harddrive to my remote airport express and access that from the wireless network on all my laptops and I'm done.

Thanks for the help.

[devman]

Thanks for the reply. That's what I thought but it didn't work. However, I've sorted it now and it's much simpler than I imagined. All you have to do is repliicate the Access control list on each Airport express. So in this instance I needed to put the MAC address of my powerbook on both Airport Expresses. Once I did this it worked fine.

Now all I need to do is attach my new ethernet external harddrive to my remote airport express and access that from the wireless network on all my laptops and I'm done.

Thanks for the help.

ah good. well, i'm glad it's working for you. I assumed you already had the laptop's MAC address in both as I thought Apple's WDS setup automatically copied the main's setting to the remote (at least it did when I set one up ages ago). I guess it doesn't for the Access Control... (i've not used that function)

Oh well, enjoy the setup! :)