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Airport Extreme or Airport Express to extend wifi range?

palmerized

palmerized

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 15, 2007
170
8
St Jacobs, ON, Canada
I have Bell Fibe and the unit is downstairs in the family room, and as such, so is the wifi router. That means reception in the bedroom upstairs is poor.

I have an Airport Extreme that's not in use and wondered if I can set it up upstairs to extend the wifi range?

If so, do I need to put it in Bridge mode? I can do that, but doesn't it need to be hardwired into the router downstairs for to work? Or, can it pick u the wifi signal from downstairs and just extend it?

My iMac is upstairs, and gets great reception in the living room. Can I plug the Airport into the iMac via Ethernet? Would that work?

Sorry, not a networking specialist...
 
If I were you I would get rid of the router downstairs and replace it with the extreme.. The extreme probably has better signal..

but you can use the extreme in bridge mode which can be set up as follows

(ref: AirPort Utility > Select the AirPort Extreme > Manual Setup > Internet > Internet Connection > Connection Sharing = Off (Bridge Mode))
 
Can't get rid of the router as it is also powering the TV connection (Bell Fibe).

I think the Airport Extreme needs to be hardwired - it can't act as a bridge wirelessly... correct?
 
You CAN get rid of the router. Or rather...use the Extreme as your Wifi router and just keep the current box to serve the TV. Does the Bell Fibe router have an ethernet port open/available? If so...and I bet it does...attach the Extreme and create a new wireless network and use that for all your WiFi computing needs. It should indeed provide a better coverage for your home.
 
Not meaning to extend this topic beyond it's intentions....

But I was wondering if it was possible to use an Airport express as a repeater for my wifi network?

I have a Cisco router but the signal isn't far enough to reach into my bedroom, among other areas of my home.

I have an Airport express available to me and was wondering whether or not I could plug it into a wall outlet an use it as a wireless signal repeater so I can get a relatively strong signal via the same router?
 
viphone said:
not meaning to extend this topic beyond it's intentions....

But i was wondering if it was possible to use an airport express as a repeater for my wifi network?

I have a cisco router but the signal isn't far enough to reach into my bedroom, among other areas of my home.

I have an airport express available to me and was wondering whether or not i could plug it into a wall outlet an use it as a wireless signal repeater so i can get a relatively strong signal via the same router?
Click to expand...

bump.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

ViPhone said:
Not meaning to extend this topic beyond it's intentions....

But I was wondering if it was possible to use an Airport express as a repeater for my wifi network?

I have a Cisco router but the signal isn't far enough to reach into my bedroom, among other areas of my home.

I have an Airport express available to me and was wondering whether or not I could plug it into a wall outlet an use it as a wireless signal repeater so I can get a relatively strong signal via the same router?
Click to expand...

You can enable the Airport Express to connect to an existing wireless network and accept guest. Just beware this configuration cuts the bandwidth in half. Hardwiring as an access point is the better solution.
 
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