Current Airport Extreme w/ "1st Gen" Airport Express

[neoelectronaut]

I'll be picking up a current generation Airport Extreme soon to set up a wi-fi signal in my apartment. I also own a original Airport Express. I'd love to be able to use the original Airport Express' Airplay functionality in conjunction with the new Airport Extreme, but will doing this bring down the speed of my entire network in the process?

 

[sevoneone]

That depends on a few things. Depending on how big and what the layout of your apartment is, your newer devices should prefer the 5GHz band, leaving the 2.4GHz for the Express and smooth sailing.

If you have a situation where some higher-speed 802.11n devices are using the 2.4GHz band because of signal issues, or they are not dual band capable, you could see some slow down for those specific devices. How bad that is depends on what kind of airtime fairness Apple has built into the newest AP Extremes, if any. I was surprised to find that I couldn't find any information about this on Apple's site or with a Google search. Could be anywhere from not noticeable to fairly bad.

Generally, as long as you don't have a large amount of mixed newer/older devices using the same network, I think you will be fine.