Airport Extreme Questions

[fishmoose]

I'm strongly considering getting an Airport Extreme as a Christmas present to myself. But I have a few questions about it which I can't really find online.

Firstly, our setup here goes like this: We have a Fiber connection that comes out of its own little modem mounted in the wall. From there a regular Ethernet cable goes to a a router issued by our ISP. Only reason we uses this router is because we have voip landline phone service via our ISP. Although there's just an adapter you connect your landline phone to and then a regular Ethernet cable connects to a designated phone port on the router I assume there's special software on that router handling the phone services. So I guess the Extreme can't handle that?

Based on that guess I'm planning to bridge the ISP router with the Extreme. Or does anyone have a better suggestion?

There's a few things I would like to do with the Extreme. Firstly, I want to use the Guest network capabilities. I'd like to set this Guest network to use a small part of the total bandwidth. Is it possible to regulate that via the Airport Utility?

Also I would like to block certain domains or Bittorrent in general on the Guest network? Can you do this on the Airport Extreme?

Thanks for any help!

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Sounds very similar from what I had in Tokyo in my old home.

The fiber line went into a router which also connected the VoIP phone.
What I did different is that I just connected a switch the router. The router itself was managing the access to the ISP via PPPoE.

You can connect the Aiport extreme in the same way; you keep the router as is; which I assume will provide you a DHCP based IP Adress. The airport would need to be in DCHP client mode or manual IP adress; not in PPPoE mode.

Connect the WAN cable with the router; after that you should be able to connect with iPad or Mac if those are also in DHCP mode.

For filtering certain services you might consult the router manual; that will be the better place for this protection. Mine had quite some filter rules I could define.

 

[skorpien]

Unfortunately the guest network of the AirPort Extreme doesn't afford the amount of control you require from it. You may need to consider an offering from Cisco or some other manufacturer of more fully-featured routers.

For the Extreme to have guest networking enabled, you're required to have DHCP enabled on the unit. Running that behind your ISP issued router may cause double NAT errors.

 

[fishmoose]

Thanks guys. What Cisco routers would you recommend? Correct me if I'm wrong - but the consumer part of Cisco is Linksys right?

Maybe I'll just stick with what I have. Although it would be nice to move onto 802.11N. The ISP router only supports 802.11b/g. Might just get an Extreme anyway and just skip the guest network.

 

[skorpien]

That's correct. Sorry I can't make any recommendations though, since switching to my TC and AEBS I haven't had a need to go back to Linksys (but my networking needs aren't as complex as others may be).

If you really are thinking of giving up the guest network, go with the AEBS. It's a great router all in all.

Otherwise I'd suggest going with a simultaneous dual band router from Linksys. If you visit www.dd-wrt.com, you can see which models are compatible with their firmware and you can have the option of flashing the router for even more functionality.

 

[fishmoose]

Thanks. I think I'll go for the Extreme but I'll definitely check out that link and compare models.