Airport Questions

[rotlex]

Hi all,

Although I haven't made the switch yet, I'm gathering info on what I'm going to need to do what I want. I have a question regarding the Airport if anyone can answer. I'll try to keep it short, but I tend to ramble.

What I'm wondering is if what I'm thinking will work. I currently have a Linksys 4 port switch/router that connects my home network. Also have a cable modem connected directly to the router. What I would like to be able to do, once I purchase the Mac, is keep the current router and cable modem in place, connect the Airport to the router and allow all of my systems to access the network and the internet through it. One side point is my wife uses a Dell laptop running XP that won't be changing anytime soon, so I'll need to make sure I can't get a card that's compatible with Windows and the Airport for it. One other thing in the mix is a USB Canon Photo printer. (S900). Is it actually possible to connect this to the Airport as well and have it shared amongst the machines, or would I be better of connecting it directly to a computer? Reason I'm asking on the printer is I"m still up in the air as to whether or I'll be buying a Tower or a Powerbook. If I go with the Power book, I'd like to just be able to leave the printer attached to the Airport so I don't have to keep plugging it in.

If what I'm asking above makes any sense, any answer would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mactastic]

Ok, first off, I'm not entirely sure you can use your existing router, since the airport also acts as a router. You may have to go with just a switch, luckily those are cheap. Secondly, you would probably be better off sharing the printer from a computer rather than the airport, since I believe one of the requirements for usb printing through the airport is os x 10.2.3. Your wife's XP machine would be out of luck, but I do believe (correct me if I'm wrong people!) that you CAN share a printer with a windows machine through a mac tower. You could solve this by switching to a LAN printer. And as far as I know, any 802.11b or 802.11g card from any manufacturer will work. The airport only requires one mac on the network to set it up.

 

[Rower_CPU]

The setup you describe sounds exactly like my home network. I've got a cable modem > 4 port switch > Airport Base Station and it works beautifully.

Any 802.11b card you get for the Dell laptop should work with Airport, since it's based on the 802.11b standard.

The Airport Extreme Base Stations come with a USB port for hooking up a printer directly and sharing it via Airport. You can also do something similar with an older base station by hooking the printer up to one of the wireless Macs and sharing the printer (only in 10.2 and newer) via System Preferences.