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Re: Airport set up

N

ntrudr01

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 27, 2008
6
0
New to this so thank you for your patience. I have "Airport". Now do I also have to purchase Airport Extreme, or another unit? I htought Airport was kind of a stand alone system. I am looking to set up a wireless network with a laptop pc as the other unit. Thank you again.:eek:
 
Any wireless router will work. "AirPort" is simply Apple's brand name for the same thing.

If you buy an Apple-branded AirPort router, it will work perfectly well with your PC, but you will pay about 3x as much for it as for any other wireless router.
 
BlueRevolution said:
Any wireless router will work. "AirPort" is simply Apple's brand name for the same thing.

If you buy an Apple-branded AirPort router, it will work perfectly well with your PC, but you will pay about 3x as much for it as for any other wireless router.
Click to expand...

So I DO need a wireless router such as lynksys or similar? Then what is airports function?..sorry for what are probably frustratingly basic quesitons for you, and thank you for your response.
 
The confusion due to marketing terminology is very understandable.

"Airport" is something of a generic name for Apple's wifi family of products. Airport card or module of the 'old days' used to be the wireless card in the computer to communicate with a wifi base station.

Airport base station, Airport Extreme and Airport Express (and Time Capsule) are the base stations Apple sold/sells.

So you need an airport module on the computer that talks to a base station of some kind (named above, or from another manufacturer like LinkSys). The outgoing Internet connection goes from the airport module to the base station to the DSL/Cable modem to your Internet Provider and the Internet (some modems have built in base stations).

Having said that, if you have a wired Internet connection -- say your cable modem has an ethernet port you connected with a CAT5 cable to your machine's ethernet port to get Internet connection, you can then share this connection using the airport wireless module on your computer, so in effect using it like a (lightweight) base station. Hope this clarifies things somewhat.
 
Yes,,,,ok,,got it now,,,,I appreciate your explanation,,thanks again.
 
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