Is airport express enough?

[Schnebar]

Now we have 6 macs in our house hooked up to the internet with some linksys router and hard wires.

My dad has a macbook which he hooks up to the wire when he wants to go on the internet.

And I just got a touch.

I was thinking of getting wifi now so we can use the devices without wires.

We would leave the computers hard wired because it is faster but could we just get an airport express and put it somewhere hooked up to the router and it broadcast wirelessly to these two devices.

And about how far can it go?

our rooms are about 4 rooms away

thanks.

 

[aristobrat]

If you can put the Express near the center of the house, you should get more equal coverage throughout the house. I don't think you'd have a problem covering four rooms, but it really depends on what your walls are made up of and stuff like that. My roommates room on the first floor has the heater/air conditioner unit over it in the attic, so WiFi sucks in his room because of that. I mean, it works, it's just not as fast as it is in the other rooms.

If I were you, the easiest way to add the Express to your network is to plug it into one of your routers existing ethernet ports. Hopefully you have one of them that's not being used. Then you configure the Express to run in "bridged mode", which tells it not to act as a router (which you don't need it to do, since you already have a router), and you should be good to go.

 

[CalBoy]

Since you're in California, I'm going to venture a guess and say that your house is made of wood right? This means you won't see too much of a signal loss through one or two barriers, but it will start to add up. For example, I'm about 30-35 feet from my router, and the signal travels through two walls, a door, and half of another wall. By the time it gets to where my mbp is at, the signal strength is about 60-70% on average. However, this is a small D-Link router, which I DO NOT recommend. The Airports have better range and superior quality, so you should be fine if it's place somewhere near the center of your house.

 

[Schnebar]

Thanks for the help.

We just ordered it.

Do we need to buy anything else or will it just work with the macbook and iPod touch?

I have no idea what all the 802.11b or 802.11g numbers mean but I hope it will not be an issue.

 

[CalBoy]

Thanks for the help.

We just ordered it.

Do we need to buy anything else or will it just work with the macbook and iPod touch?

I have no idea what all the 802.11b or 802.11g numbers mean but I hope it will not be an issue.

You shouldn't need anything else, and you shouldn't have any issues. If you do, be sure to post about them, and we'll be glad to render what assistance we can