Airport Extreme

[rickvanr]

I am stumped.

I have cable internet, the modem is in bridge mode. I have an Airport Extreme providing the wifi at my home.

I have a cat6 cable running to a switch that gives me a hardwired connection to my desktop, ps5 and entertainment set up in the basement.

When the cat6 is plugged into the ethernet port on the modem I get internet. When the cat6 is plugged into the airport extreme I don't get internet.

This would be a big nothingburger to me, aside from Netflix and Disney+ clamping down on password sharing. When I watch something on the wifi, then on the hardwired connection it thinks I'm somewhere else and I have to "update my home". It's annoying and I'm just curious if there is an easy solution here I'm over looking

Thanks

 

[macaddiict]

It sounds like your wifi devices are routing through the Airport Extreme's IP, while your basement devices are hitting the internet through a separate path with a different IP. Netflix/Disney+ see two different IPs = they often think it is two different households.

The other thing to check: your modem is in bridge mode, which means it's passing a single IP through to whatever is connected to it. If your basement switch is plugged directly into the modem, it's bypassing the Airport entirely and getting its own separate connection.

The fix is likely that everything needs to flow through the Airport Extreme.

Modem→ Airport Extreme (WAN port!)→ switch→ basement devices

The switch plugs into a LAN port on the Airport, not the modem. The Airport handles all routing for every device in the house, everyone shares the same public IP, and the streaming services see one household.

Given how ancient every Airport is, you'd probably get significant performance increases if you got a newer wifi router OR a modem/router than can handle all the DHCP/NAT responsibilities and just use the Airport Extreme as a Access Point mode wifi network only.

 

[rickvanr]

It sounds like your wifi devices are routing through the Airport Extreme's IP, while your basement devices are hitting the internet through a separate path with a different IP. Netflix/Disney+ see two different IPs = they often think it is two different households.

The other thing to check: your modem is in bridge mode, which means it's passing a single IP through to whatever is connected to it. If your basement switch is plugged directly into the modem, it's bypassing the Airport entirely and getting its own separate connection.

The fix is likely that everything needs to flow through the Airport Extreme.

Modem→ Airport Extreme (WAN port!)→ switch→ basement devices

The switch plugs into a LAN port on the Airport, not the modem. The Airport handles all routing for every device in the house, everyone shares the same public IP, and the streaming services see one household.

Given how ancient every Airport is, you'd probably get significant performance increases if you got a newer wifi router OR a modem/router than can handle all the DHCP/NAT responsibilities and just use the Airport Extreme as a Access Point mode wifi network only.

Replacing the AE with APs is the plan, for now getting plenty of speed over Wifi.

I just power cycled a few of the devices and now they're online- I just wasn't being patient enough.

Thanks for your input

 

[macaddiict]

for now getting plenty of speed over Wifi

Yes, I know many people (myself included) who felt similarly. Then I got a single ~$50 wifi router that is Wifi 6 and was shocked that almost all of my "home network issues" went away and I never have to think about wifi outages or network crashes anymore, even on devices that don't support Wifi 6 the experience has been much better.

The Airports are abandoned and slow and beyond the security risks of having that be your network, you also will be rebooting stuff and chasing network problems for ages. They constantly have buffer overruns and the internal system runs out of processor and memory capcity (the Airport Extreme has at most 512 MB RAM if you have a 2013 updated model, but many have 64 to 128 MB RAM)

The Airport Setup Utility isn't even as user-friendly as most cheaper router interfaces these days. The only reason I can imagine anyone using an Airport today is for hi-fidelity streaming setups that use the Tos-link on some units to get lossless wifi audio over Music, or maybe for a retro network setup. Using it for something with a PS5 and a modern desktop is forcing your devices to fight for every packet they send and receive thanks to the ancient device routing and translating addresses on your network.

 

[Mrbobb]

I just power cycled a few of the devices and now they're online- I just wasn't being patient enough.

When u moved the client from modem to AE, the IP changed but the DHCP was not quick enough to immediately assign you a new, appropriate IP, but rebooting forced an IP renew.

Since I acquired a Ubiquiti6, my AE WIFI is turned off and it just running as the NAT device, its only job now, am getting 170/40 mbit Internet, plenty for my small place.