Combo Network with Airport

[ashokrai]

I have a dilema, and I'm not sure this is the right forum to ask this question in. We have a combinaton network in the house, 3 computers connect to the internet "wired" and 2 wireless. I would like to have the network setup in such a way that all 5 computers "see" each other for iTunes, etc.

Here is our home setup. All the rooms in the home have a Cat 5 port. All of those are home run to my media closet in the basement and go into a wired router. The cable modem is in that closet also and plugs into the router. Up in our bedroom (where the 2 wireless laptops are located) we have an airport station. Currently all 5 computers work with out a problem for surfing the net, but I would like to get the wireless computers visable to the wired ones and vice versa.

Any suggestions. The cable modem can't move from the basement.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Celeron]

Is the Airport station connected via a cable to the router in the basement? If not, you'll need to get the two connected, either via wireless or wired.

 

[ashokrai]

Is the Airport station connected via a cable to the router in the basement? If not, you'll need to get the two connected, either via wireless or wired.

I have the cable modem feeding into the router. A cable is home run from the router up to the airport in our bedroom. That seems to work well except for all the computers seeing each other.

 

[Peace]

Replace your Router with an Airport Extreme Base Station.

Plug the wired computers into it and run your wireless through it.

You will be able to see all the computers in your house provided you have sharing turned on.

 

[gsahli]

Since you already have the equipment, the cheaper thing to do is change setup...
Go into Airport Admin and uncheck "Distribute IP addresses" for the Airport Base. Restart all computers. This will put all computers in the same local subnet. When an Airport Base is doing all the normal router things, all wireless computers are in a separate subnet from the other router. You can confirm this before changing by checking the IP addresses of all computers. Wired ones are in one subnet (probably 192.168.x.x) and wireless ones are probably in the 10.0.0.x subnet.

good luck.

 

[brbubba]

Since you already have the equipment, the cheaper thing to do is change setup...
Go into Airport Admin and uncheck "Distribute IP addresses" for the Airport Base. Restart all computers. This will put all computers in the same local subnet. When an Airport Base is doing all the normal router things, all wireless computers are in a separate subnet from the other router. You can confirm this before changing by checking the IP addresses of all computers. Wired ones are in one subnet (probably 192.168.x.x) and wireless ones are probably in the 10.0.0.x subnet.

good luck.

I assume that's the airport equivalent of forwarding DHCP requests. I have never used an Airport product, but every other wireless router product I have used supports bridging mode. Basically you disable all DHCP on the router config page, then connect the LAN side of the wireless router to the LAN side of your main router. All wireless traffic will be bridged to the main router, including DHCP requests.

 

[ashokrai]

Since you already have the equipment, the cheaper thing to do is change setup...
Go into Airport Admin and uncheck "Distribute IP addresses" for the Airport Base. Restart all computers. This will put all computers in the same local subnet. When an Airport Base is doing all the normal router things, all wireless computers are in a separate subnet from the other router. You can confirm this before changing by checking the IP addresses of all computers. Wired ones are in one subnet (probably 192.168.x.x) and wireless ones are probably in the 10.0.0.x subnet.

good luck.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!! I did exactly that and now all the computers see each other.

 

[brbubba]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!! I did exactly that and now all the computers see each other.

I'm glad you got it all working, but I would still recommend picking up some light reading sometime about networking so you can understand what it is that you just did.