Airport Extreme - The most annoying thing in the world....

[tompz]

A plea for help on my first post is not very dignified, but there we are, what can you do.....

Having just got back to the UK from Cali with a bag full of Apple goodies I went to set up my new Airport Extreme.....

wow, I wish I hadn't bought it........ My previous set up was just a wireless belkin router and from what I read it looks like I will still have to use this, am I right?

Is there a way of plugging the beast straight into my phone socket / DSL like the belkin does? If so do I need a phone to Ethernet cable?

The people at the apple store in CA assured me that it would work "straight out of the box" when I got home and I believed them, what a mug!

Any help with this would be much appreciated, believe me... as if it's not working by the end of this weekend......it's either going back to my local Apple Store or going on Ebay!


Thanks to all in advance.

 

[gavd]

It wil work straight out of the box. It's just that the Airport Extreme isn't a modem/router like you need and is just a router.

You're going to need a modem as well. Did your ISP give you one when you signed up with them? I have a cable from my modem and then an ethernet cable to my wireless router which is what you need to do.

 

[tompz]

So there was no real point of buying this then, other than to have a network drive / shared printer....

Oh well, I'm sure that it'll be worth it...

Thanks

 

[Gentile]

From what I read on this forum, most routers sold in the U.S. do not include a modem because there is not one standard modem type. However, in Europe just the opposite seems to be true with a combination router/modem being the most common configuration.

 

[mkrishnan]

From what I read on this forum, most routers sold in the U.S. do not include a modem because there is not one standard modem type. However, in Europe just the opposite seems to be true with a combination router/modem being the most common configuration.

Yes, and also, in the US, one also has to remember that there is relatively strong competition between ADSL and cable internet (via cable television infrastructure); so the farthest it's going to get down to is two modem types (one for cable and one for DSL).

 

[eRondeau]

So there was no real point of buying this then, other than to have a network drive / shared printer....

It is also a very effective hardware firewall (NAT router). One of the most important reasons to own one, in my opinion.

 

[skunk]

From what I read on this forum, most routers sold in the U.S. do not include a modem because there is not one standard modem type. However, in Europe just the opposite seems to be true with a combination router/modem being the most common configuration.

There is healthy competition here (UK) between ADSL and cable, too. My AEBSn is plugged into my cable modem.

 

[mkrishnan]

There is healthy competition here (UK) between ADSL and cable, too. My AEBSn is plugged into my cable modem.

Ahhh, I didn't realize that. It seems like... crass generalization ahead... every time there is a thread from a UKer with networking trouble, they invariably have British Telecom and some kind of junky integrated router/modem that invariably breaks. So I always assumed most Britons got their internet from BT.

Or does that just mean that there's healthy competition between DSL and Cable, but only the DSL sucks?