Airport Express & Windows wired lan

[msjh]

After 20 years of buying IBM I've just bought an iMac G5 20" with Bluetooth keyboard and Mouse and an Airport Express. I'm delighted, as you may guess!

I already have 4 Windows PCs on a wired 10/100 lan at home. I just plugged in the Airport Express to the hub and hey presto I got Internet access from the iMac through the Windows machine with the broadband connection. So no problems there.

The problem is that I cannot see the Windows PCs on the Apple network nor the iMac on the Windows PCs. So, how do I get this to work? I want to be able to backup from one to another, share printers, etc.

Suggestions most welcome.

 

[Gee]

I think you need to enable windows sharing and personal file sharing from the Sharing control panel (apple menu - system prefs - sharing - services).

 

[IndyGopher]

I think you need to enable windows sharing and personal file sharing from the Sharing control panel (apple menu - system prefs - sharing - services).

That's a start, but you also need to be sure the AE is setup to bridge the two "networks", which was not the default on the original airport (don't know if this changed with AE) The Airport Setup app is a little cryptic in this regard, but the gist is that you want to create ONE virtual network, and not two. (You want the machines on the same subnet so they can play nice together without a lot of hassle) You need to setup the AE base station to hand out IP's, in the same family as your other machines. If you use static IP's this is simple, if you use DHCP for all your IP's, you will need to set your AE to give out IP's that won't conflict with the DHCP server your PC's are using (another router, usually, or a server if you're setup that way) In my case, the wired network is handed IP's by a D-Link router handing out IP's from x.x.1.100 to x.x.1.200 with the Airport Express handing out IP's from x.x.1.201 to x.x.1.250 I use the x.x.1.1 - x.x.1.99 range for things with static IP's, like my ethernet printers, routers, internet-attached cameras, etc.

Dunno if any of that is helpful.. hope so.