airport express and hotel internet?

[CrAkD]

Im going on a vacation (today actually!) were going to disney and I know they only have ethernet internet from last year. last year I had my macbook but it has since died. now all I have is an ipad 2 and iphone 4. so im considering buying an airport express for the hotel my worry is will it need to be setup? I dont have a laptop to set it up with so im wondering if the purchase will be for nothing........Anyone know?

 

[blevins321]

It depends on if they have a firewall setup that prohibits routers or not. Many corporate networks do. If not, it should be a simple maneuver in Airport Utility to set it up. Otherwise, there probably isn't a way to do it.

Other option to try is to plug in your laptop to their ethernet and enable Internet Sharing. With any luck, their firewall won't detect this.

 

[Jolly Giant]

see if this discussion provides the necessary pointers.

btw, your express can store up to five profiles (one for use @ home and one for travel, say), however, you need a computer to configure the express before you hit the road. have a look @ this support article.

 

[Vetman]

You might need to reconfigure the Airport Express using Airport Utility to disable NAT. Internet (icon) / Internet (tab) / Connection Sharing. Change "Share a public ip address" to "Off Bridged mode". This will let only your iPad connect but should avoid any problems with Disney routers.

When I was at Disney a few months ago, we took a Virgin Mobile MiFi 2200 (Walmart $129-149) and used it everywhere with the iPad on a single $40 for 30day fee.

 

[CrAkD]

Thanks for the replies guys. I ended up buying a $30 portable wireless n router that can be configured by safari on the iPad. My main worry was setting it up wrong at home then getting there and it not working. The iPad has AT&T 3G but last year my room had terrible AT&T service. So at least now I can tweak all the settings on the iPad to get it working.

 

[Richdmoore]

I am happily using an airport express that I configured with my mac, but then plug into hotel wired Internet as needed. You can't configue it without running a program first.

I am sure others will be interested in a router you can configure on the fly instead, what's the make and model of the travel router you purchased?

 

[CrAkD]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Tenda w150m http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0345063

It has a mode switch for you to flip thru the different modes without a computer. Also can log into the control panel on the iPad in safari without the Internet even connected. I'm on the road now I'll report back and let you guys know how it works out!