airport express in dorm

[guitarpm]

I used my aiport express at home to play music and it worked great. But now I'm at school and when I plug it in with the ethernet cable in, the light is green but when I connect to it I can't view the internet at all.

Using the Express Assistant I can configure the password for the network and change its name, but at the end of it, it says it cannot find a base station... yet just seconds earlier a notification will come up saying the wireless network i just configured is available... when I connect to it I can't view the interenet though...

I'm totally lost...

I've tried the reset button and all that, does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Stinkythe1]

I'm not sure how the campus/dorm internet is set up, but most likely, they have a T1 line going through a router they have set up in a closet somewhere that is going to a big ole switch which then all these cables are run up to every dorm room. I don't think that the airport express would be able to connect to the internet if there is already a router in place. In other words, you can't have 2 routers daisy-chained.

If you are simply trying to create a wireless access point, i'm sure you could configure the airport express to be just a WAP and not a router.

 

[xparaparafreakx]

Check first if your school allows you to have a router in your room. Some may allow allow you to make your AP Express act as a wireless point not a router.

 

[clayj]

Is it even possible to use NAT (Network Address Translation) within NAT? It seems likely that the dorm is treated as a private network, with the dorm's router acting as the gateway to the Internet or to the university network... I don't think you can nest one private network inside another and have the IP addresses resolve correctly.

I'd agree that the AirPort Express probably needs to be set up as a "dumb" access point, with no NAT configured.

 

[puckhead193]

i know at my school were not allowed to have our own wireless internet, but i was woundering if their is away to set it up so you can just print and listen to air-tunes...

 

[buryyourbrideau]

i know at my school were not allowed to have our own wireless internet, but i was woundering if their is away to set it up so you can just print and listen to air-tunes...

of course their is. all you do is connect the speaker connection to your airport and the usb printer to your airport. then the base station will show up in itunes instead of computer and then u just use bonjour to set up the wireless printer. i used my airport like this for two months before i used it as a router

 

[jaw04005]

Can't you just plug your AirPort Express into the Ethernet cable which is connected to your school's LAN, and then turn off "Distribute IP Addresses" on the AirPort Express. That would allow your dorm's router to give the computers on your wireless network an assigned IP. As long as your school's LAN has DHCP enabled it should work.

 

[jaw04005]

Is it even possible to use NAT (Network Address Translation) within NAT? It seems likely that the dorm is treated as a private network, with the dorm's router acting as the gateway to the Internet or to the university network... I don't think you can nest one private network inside another and have the IP addresses resolve correctly.

I'd agree that the AirPort Express probably needs to be set up as a "dumb" access point, with no NAT configured.

You can enable NAT on two routers that are connected together, however one router would need to be set up to distribute addresses at the 192.168.1.x range and the other would need to be set up to distribute IP addresses at the 10.0.1.x range.

That just creates two subnets, and will cause problems when you want to access a device (iTunes Sharing, AirPort Express audio out, etc) on the 10.0.1.x subnet, and your actually connected to the 192.168.1.x subnet.

I'm doing it right now to keep my roommate from being able to "see" or "browse" the computers in my home office.

 

[puckhead193]

of course their is. all you do is connect the speaker connection to your airport and the usb printer to your airport. then the base station will show up in itunes instead of computer and then u just use bonjour to set up the wireless printer. i used my airport like this for two months before i used it as a router

yay, i'm happy now that i know i can do this, now all i need to do is get rid of my eihernet cable and i will have a wireless desktop (dam school) Although i'm in love with the BT mouse and keyboard infact i'm typing this on my keyboard to make sure it works!!!