AirPort Exrpess (AirTunes) woes

[DSchwartz88]

Hey,

So ive been using the express with airtunes for a while now at my home. This past month i moved to college and brough my express with me. SOmething very strange happend when it came to airtunes. With the base station hooked into the wall and the speakers (not the network) it will broadcast fine. But once a network cable is put into the base station the airtunes option just completely goes away. the point is i want to have internet while playing music on my speakers. any help would be great. thanks

Dan

 

[Gee]

Hey,

So ive been using the express with airtunes for a while now at my home. This past month i moved to college and brough my express with me. SOmething very strange happend when it came to airtunes. With the base station hooked into the wall and the speakers (not the network) it will broadcast fine. But once a network cable is put into the base station the airtunes option just completely goes away. the point is i want to have internet while playing music on my speakers. any help would be great. thanks

Dan

Have you tried resetting it?

 

[daveL]

Hey,

So ive been using the express with airtunes for a while now at my home. This past month i moved to college and brough my express with me. SOmething very strange happend when it came to airtunes. With the base station hooked into the wall and the speakers (not the network) it will broadcast fine. But once a network cable is put into the base station the airtunes option just completely goes away. the point is i want to have internet while playing music on my speakers. any help would be great. thanks

Dan

Did you have a separate wireless router at home, with the Airport Express acting as a wireless client of the router (sounds like it)?

Do you have a separate wireless router at school? Do you get your internet access via an ethernet cable to a wall outlet (sounds like it)?

Without more information, my guess is that you had a wireless router at home, and the AE was a client used just to stream music. Now you have no wireless router in your dorm room, and you gain internet access by a wired connection to the wall. If that's the case, you are now trying to use the AE as a wireless router, not a client. You'll need to go through the Airport setup again and select "make a new wireless network" or something like that.

More info would help.

 

[DSchwartz88]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the reponses. My set up at home was as follows: The airport express down in my room and being used in a WDS enviorment. The main wireless router upstairs was the one getting internet from the wall and then WDSing it down to my router. My set up at school is the express getting internet from the wall (ethernet) and creating a new network called WDS, with the cable plugged into the router no speaker option, as soon as i unplug it and restart itunes it finds it

Dan

 

[daveL]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the reponses. My set up at home was as follows: The airport express down in my room and being used in a WDS enviorment. The main wireless router upstairs was the one getting internet from the wall and then WDSing it down to my router. My set up at school is the express getting internet from the wall (ethernet) and creating a new network called WDS, with the cable plugged into the router no speaker option, as soon as i unplug it and restart itunes it finds it

Dan

You are either a router or WDS, they are mutually exclusive. You want to turn off WDS and turn on DHCP in the Network tab. You also have to change the Connect Using to Ehternet in the Internet tab. This is all in the Airport Admin Utility, of course.

HTH

 

[DSchwartz88]

You are either a router or WDS, they are mutually exclusive. You want to turn off WDS and turn on DHCP in the Network tab. You also have to change the Connect Using to Ehternet in the Internet tab. This is all in the Airport Admin Utility, of course.

HTH

I am not acting as a WDS the name of my network is that. Just threw it in there. Anyways DHCP has been on, and same with ethernet. the internet works. the problem is when the internet works the speakers and vice versa

 

[daveL]

I am not acting as a WDS the name of my network is that. Just threw it in there. Anyways DHCP has been on, and same with ethernet. the internet works. the problem is when the internet works the speakers and vice versa

Oh. You said it was in WDS at home. You didn't say you had turn it off at school. I imagine your ssid was different at home, no? If so, you should have a drop-down list of remote speaks in the lower right corner of iTunes. You'll have to select the remote speakers associated with your new ssid (WDS). If the ssid is the same as your wireless router at home, I'm not sure what to say. Are you sure WDS is now turned off in Airport Admin?

 

[DSchwartz88]

Oh. You said it was in WDS at home. You didn't say you had turn it off at school. I imagine your ssid was different at home, no? If so, you should have a drop-down list of remote speaks in the lower right corner of iTunes. You'll have to select the remote speakers associated with your new ssid (WDS). If the ssid is the same as your wireless router at home, I'm not sure what to say. Are you sure WDS is now turned off in Airport Admin?

Yea im positive WDS mode is off. There drop down list in itunes only appears when i take the network cable out of the express. thats the problem. do you think that my college netowkr somehow blocks it, even though my SSID is different from the wireless on campus. I go to Carnegie so there is wireless everywhere. There is a campus wide wireless network called CMU, im going from the wall into my own express and broadcasting my own closed network with the SSID of NH1, so its completely different. Is there a certain setting i have to change when jacked into to another network so it allowes me to use the speakers?

 

[daveL]

Yea im positive WDS mode is off. There drop down list in itunes only appears when i take the network cable out of the express. thats the problem. do you think that my college netowkr somehow blocks it, even though my SSID is different from the wireless on campus. I go to Carnegie so there is wireless everywhere. There is a campus wide wireless network called CMU, im going from the wall into my own express and broadcasting my own closed network with the SSID of NH1, so its completely different. Is there a certain setting i have to change when jacked into to another network so it allowes me to use the speakers?

Sorry we keep going back and forth here. If CMU has campus-wide WiFi, what's the ethernet cable for? Where does it go? Are you saying you have wired access to the campus network in addition to the CMU wireless? Are you on the same WiFi channel as the CMU network? If so, try one several channels up or down on the AE.

 

[DSchwartz88]

Sorry we keep going back and forth here. If CMU has campus-wide WiFi, what's the ethernet cable for? Where does it go? Are you saying you have wired access to the campus network in addition to the CMU wireless? Are you on the same WiFi channel as the CMU network? If so, try one several channels up or down on the AE.

There are multiple ways to connect to the CMU network. But through all of them you must register your mac address with them.

Option 1: Register your airport card MAC address and connect through campus wide WiFi

Option 2: Register your Ethernet MAC address and connect using a cable from the wall (tons of ethernet jacks around)

Option 3: (the one i want to do) Connect the cable from the wall into the airport express. Have the express broadcast its own network with a different SSID, password, and channel, and be able to use the AirTunes.

As of the moment i can do Options 1 2 and partially 3

The part i cant do is this. If i connect the cable form the wall into the express. I get internet. i can access the outside network as well as the inside network. What i cant access is the AirTunes function. When the express is connected to the network there is no speaker option in itunes. Once i disconnect the cable from the express and remain on the same network, the box appears.

The campus im guessing has mac address filtering (all your mac addresses are inputted under your username, so you cant spoof it), is it possible the reason i cannot connect to my speakers when on the network but can when im if, is that i need to register the ethernet MAC address of the express?

 

[daveL]

The campus im guessing has mac address filtering (all your mac addresses are inputted under your username, so you cant spoof it), is it possible the reason i cannot connect to my speakers when on the network but can when im if, is that i need to register the ethernet MAC address of the express?

Yes, I would say you have to register the WAN-side ethernet MAC address with the CMU network (and unregister your Mac ethernet MAC, if you have). That should stop any filtering on your interior WiFi network.

 

[DSchwartz88]

i registered the mac address of the express (didnt feel the need to unregister the machine) what now? still not working

 

[Gee]

i registered the mac address of the express (didnt feel the need to unregister the machine) what now? still not working

Did you try reseting the Express box and starting again? There's a little paper-clip-sized button on it somewhere.

 

[DSchwartz88]

yea ive tried resetting it

 

[daveL]

Out of ideas. Perhaps you could capture screen shots of the Airport Admin main screen and all the config screens for your AE and post them? Just a thought.

 

[Gee]

Out of ideas also, though maybe it's not actually possible. I was thinking that if you set up the express as a wireless access point or whatever on an existing network (i.e. your campus network), the airtunes option becomes available to anyone on that network. Wouldn't that mean that anyone on your campus with iTunes would suddenly get the option to play music through you speakers? Maybe that's why it doesn't let you.

There's something on the apple support site about setting up the basestation as a wireless client only, where it doesn't rebroadcast access to the network, but only less someone within range use the music feature. Would it be possible for you to set up like this, and use the existing campus network for internet acccess?

Just a thought.

 

[daveL]

Out of ideas also, though maybe it's not actually possible. I was thinking that if you set up the express as a wireless access point or whatever on an existing network (i.e. your campus network), the airtunes option becomes available to anyone on that network. Wouldn't that mean that anyone on your campus with iTunes would suddenly get the option to play music through you speakers? Maybe that's why it doesn't let you.

There's something on the apple support site about setting up the basestation as a wireless client only, where it doesn't rebroadcast access to the network, but only less someone within range use the music feature. Would it be possible for you to set up like this, and use the existing campus network for internet acccess?

Just a thought.

But if he's connected to ethernet, and accessing the internet via ethernet. then he's using the AE as a router. He *should* have the AE set to distribute IP addresses for wireless connections. So, anything on the wireless side of the AE should be a separate network from the campus network. iTunes doesn't allow sharing outside your local subnet.

So, your correct, if he has the AE set up as a wireless access point to the campus network, which maybe indeed be the case. However, if he has the AE set up as a router, with the ethernet being the WAN connection and wireless being his internal, private network, then it should work.

There are so many ways to set these things up, which is why I suggested he post his Airport Admin configuration setting.