Help with cascading several Airport Extremes and a Time Capsule.

[teamangel]

I'm having trouble cascading several Airport Extremes (AE) and a Time Capsule in my home. My house is wired for ethernet connections in each room so I'm trying to connect all or most of the ethernet ports up by cascading routers. What I have that's working is one AE (I'll call it AE1) in the basement where the cable modem is installed. I also have a Time Capsule (TC) in my master bedroom that's connected into AE1. The AE1 is set to a static router ip of 10.0.1.1 with DHCP and NAT on to assign ip's in the range of 10.0.1.6 to 10.0.1.200 (reserving 10.0.1.1-5 for the routers). The TC is set to a static ip of 10.0.1.2 and in bridge mode. They both work fine. It's when I try to add another AE (AE2) to AE1. I set AE2's similar to the TC's setup, using static ip of 10.0.1.3 and in bridge mode as well but it doesn't work. When I plug an ethernet cable into AE2, my laptop gets an ip address of 169.XXX.XX.XXX or something instead of the 10.0.1.XXX it should be assigned. What am I doing wrong????

 

[rctlr]

169.xxx.xxx.xxx is usually a "dummy" ip address if it cannot pick up an ip address from the network.

Hows Wireless? getting an IP there?

 

[teamangel]

I disabled the wireless network on AE2 as I only want the ethernet ports on AE2. AE1 and TC have their wireless networks turned on.

 

[Altemose]

I disabled the wireless network on AE2 as I only want the ethernet ports on AE2. AE1 and TC have their wireless networks turned on.

Wouldn't it just be cheaper to get an unmanaged switch?

 

[eduardrw]

Have you tried to hard reset the AE2. Then just connect it to the ethernet cable (Wan port).
Check with Airport utility if it gets its IP address automatically. If not you may have a connectivity problem.