ADSL Modem + AirPort + Printer

[R.Youden]

Hi everyone. Quick question...

I have just got a new Belkin ADSL wireless modem + router. I use this to connect my PowerBook + PowerMac to my ADSL internet connection. I now want to add my AirPort Express to my network so I can print wirelessly (is that a word?). Any way I plug in the Airport, plug the printer into the Airport etc... I then go into Printer Setup and try to Add a printer. In the Apple online guide it says that Rendevous should appear to add the printer (how out of date is that? Under Tiger it is called Bonjour aint it!). Anyway I cant get it to workk how I want, any ideas anyone?

Thanks

 

[R.Youden]

Anyone.....

 

[mkrishnan]

1) Is your Airport Express joining the existing network, or creating a subnetwork? That is, when you log in, do you see the connected network under the AE's name or under the Belkin's name? Assuming you are connected using the network that the Belkin created, and the AE is trying to join it, when you are so connected, can Airport Admin Utility see the AE?

2) You should not even have to add a Bonjour printer via the utility. Once you are on the network, and the printer is on, from any program, when you click print, and the print dialog comes up, if you click on the list box for the list of printers, then there should be a Bonjour -> xxx submenu listing any printers that are available at the time via Bonjour. The menu only appears if one or more printers are available via Bonjour, though.

3) If all of that is not working for some reason... do you have any *wired* ethernet devices? If not, plug the Airport into a wired port of the Belkin, have it create a second subnetwork, and have everything connect to it. It isn't ideal, but it's quick and easy.

 

[albanwr]

WDS, where are you?

Richard - you have hit the same problem as I have many times over, in order to share the adsl connection with the airport base stat'n the Belkin adsl router must support WDS ( which it doesn't).
Suggest you return the router to the shop and get a 3com office connect one instead, which supports WDS and ( most of the features of the belkin kit too ).

I have hit this problem with a few different manufacturers, they don't even have a provision to connect their own base stations together - nice huh....

Any how let me know how you get on.

Craig Jones

www.albanwr.com

 

[R.Youden]

Thanks for everyones help. I have managed to get it working. I just had to go through the airport setup assistant and bingo (well that was after i remembered to switch the printer on...)

Anyway there is one little extra thing that I have noticed with the Belkin router, ever now and again it 'hangs' on me. When I try and load a webpage i get the first little bit through then it says the webpage could not be found. I click refresh and it loads....

 

[mkrishnan]

(well that was after i remembered to switch the printer on...)

Well, I'm glad it works now!

As for the hang issue... it almost sounds like a timeout problem. Do Safari and Firefox do the same thing, or different things?

 

[R.Youden]

The same thing appears to happen in both Safari and Firefox! Strange really, all I have to do is click refresh and it runs fine untill I leave it without accessing a page for any period of time...

 

[pknz]

Therorectically you don't need the Airport.

I use a D-Link ADSL router which has 4 ethernet ports and emits wirelessly. I have a HP Printer which is also wireless and wirelessly connects to the router. My computers: iMac connects to via ethernet cable, iBook wirelessly, and nx5000 wirelessly. They all can print to the printer on that network.

This is not fullproof, I often have problems sometimes a computer can't find the printer (IP changes, HP software is not easy to change the IP) and the HP} software is just crap. Especially on Tiger.

 

[mkrishnan]

The same thing appears to happen in both Safari and Firefox! Strange really, all I have to do is click refresh and it runs fine untill I leave it without accessing a page for any period of time...

Ahhh, I think I might know what your problem is , but I'm not sure I can explain it clearly .



Okay, so you surf continuously, and everything works fine, and then if you do something non-internet for a while, when you come back, your connection is slow or hangs while loading a new page, right? I had this happen to me with SBC/Yahoo! DSL here in the US.

For me, the solution had to do with the options for PPPoE in the router or the DSL modem -- I can't remember which. Whichever one I had logging into the network (I think it was the Linksys wired router) had an option that specified how long it should keep a PPPoE connection idle without dropping it. This setting was a small number like 3 or 5 minutes. So, when I stopped using the net, the router dropped the PPPoE. And then had to essentially "dial" back in. Sort of like if your airport card turned off after five minutes of no use, and you had to acquire a new airport connection to start surfing again.

I cranked the number up to something like 24 hours, and the issues went away. At least in the case of my DSL, there are no contraindications for persisting the connection, so it turned out to work fine.