ok,still no solid answer.will the airport express work with a wireless modem from westell as a extender without the apple base station?im trying to get the internet to reach out to the back yard deck.or maybe I'm going about this the wrong way,I don't know.but don't want to use any cable.
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extend wireless internet with airport express
- Thread starter gpp
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The AirPort Express does only work with another AirPort module (AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme Base Station) if you want to extend a network, in other words, it can only extend a network from another AirPort module, as far as I have seen in documentation and threads.
Also extenders work best when wired to the base station, else you get a >50% reduction in WiFi throughput.
if you go wired, you can extend.
wireless will not work reliably with manufactures other than apple.
if you can't get an ethernet cable from the router to the airport, powerline networking is a viable alternative.
as mentioned wired is the best way to go anyway, with wireless extension, the repeater will cut the speed approximately in half, as it uses half the bandwidth to talk back to the main base, and half to your computer.
also on the page for powerline i saw this from d-link (the DAP-1320).
in a quick look it might do what you want. but do your research.
wireless will not work reliably with manufactures other than apple.
if you can't get an ethernet cable from the router to the airport, powerline networking is a viable alternative.
as mentioned wired is the best way to go anyway, with wireless extension, the repeater will cut the speed approximately in half, as it uses half the bandwidth to talk back to the main base, and half to your computer.
also on the page for powerline i saw this from d-link (the DAP-1320).
in a quick look it might do what you want. but do your research.
You might also look at whether the Westell modem is not up to the job. Some of the modems supplied as residential gateways really stink at wifi. Putting a better router just downstream from it via ethernet, and then using that new router to do the actual routing, especially with a good external antenna, might get your signal to where you want it. Sometimes even moving the signal source a bit can help, as can using a directional rather than omni antenna.