Airport Question

[tefleming]

Can any two Airport products be used as multiple instances of one network?

A friend of mine has an office in a finished shed behind his house. He's got an Ethernet cable connecting it to the wireless router in his house. We're replacing the router with a Time Capsule (for his MB).

Which product would be best to use in the shed (basically need an Access Point and an ethernet switch?)

Can the Express do that or does he need a base station?

Never mind, found a doc on Apple's website, any "Extreme" or newer product can form a WDS network.

 

[waw74]

it sounds like there is a wire going to the remote location, so WDS (wireless distribution system) isn't what you want.
WDS can kill a network's speed, so you don't want to do this if you don't have to. Plus currently wired links are almost always faster and more reliable than a wireless link. Try getting a wireless signal in the same room as a running microwave oven.

you can set up a second (or more) base on any network. just use same SSID, and security settings, but different channels on the bases. the computers should switch to the better signal automatically. and the bases don't all have to be apple products to play well with each other.
I've done this before on both ends of my house.

depending on what router he was using, he might be able to use that as an access point, without having to buy new hardware. if it doesn't have the option just to set it up as an access point, look at DD-WRT, a Linux based firmware that runs on many Linksys (and other brands) routers.

personally if his router will run DD-WRT, i would use that as the main router, and put the Time Capsule in the office. as DD-WRT is much more configurable than the Time Capsule