Oh the cleverness of me!

[Exegesis48]

I don't know why I hadn't thought of this sooner, but today I had a sudden stroke of genius and decided to setup my old Linksys Wireless G router in combination with my Apple Airport Time Capsule. I'm sure that I am not the first to think of doing this, but I just can't believe I didn't think of it sooner myself.

The reason for doing this is so that I can set the Apple Time Capsule to Wireless N 5ghz only mode, which enhances the connection for our two Macbooks. So then the Linksys Wireless G router can handle our old legacy devices (Tivo, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DSs, etc) at 2.4ghz.

I thought I would have some trouble getting everything to work, but it was really really simple. Just had to make sure I disabled DHCP server on the Wireless G router, and then everything was good to go.

I hope that someone else is able to benefit from this setup, I know that my Time Capsule backups seem to be a lot speedier! Feel free to mock me for not figuring this out sooner.

 

[flopticalcube]

I mock you! Many people have done this with their old g routers. My dlink was relegated to slave duties as my g router when I got my AEBS well over a year ago. Its a great setup that works flawlessly and is fairly simple to get going.

 

[Doctor Q]

This suggestion will help me. It's exactly my situation and I haven't been using the old router at all, despite having some older networked devices. I just never got around to optimizing, and this is useful advice!

And to think that I looked at the thread only because of the thread title!

 

[Eidorian]

Why didn't I think of attaching my old router to handle devices without 802.11n support....

Thanks

 

[rkdiddy]

bummer i gave my old linksys to a buddy.

 

[richard.mac]

how exactly would you do this with a DSL wireless g router and an older n only Airport Extreme?

just plug an ethernet cable from one of the ethernet ports in the router to the WAN port in the AEBS? does it have to be a cross over cable?

 

[Exegesis48]

how exactly would you do this with a DSL wireless g router and an older n only Airport Extreme?

just plug an ethernet cable from one of the ethernet ports in the router to the WAN port in the AEBS? does it have to be a cross over cable?

I believe that would work, your situation is slightly different as you have the DSL modem built into the Wireless G router. So you would still want the Wireless G router to act as the DHCP server, and then connect one of the four ports on the DSL router to one of the four ports on the back of the Airport Extreme. The reason i say this is because I think the WAN is for direct ip connections, and sine your Wireless G router is acting as a DHCP server, you'll just want the Airport Extreme to be a client on the network like any other computer. Then set the Airport Extreme to act as a Access point and turn off it's DHCP server. That should let you have full 802.11n 5ghz goodness while still having your Wireless G DSL modem to serve your other devices.

Hope this helps. I really should have named this thread something more relevant. Guess I'm not as clever as I thought .

 

[richard.mac]

I believe that would work, your situation is slightly different as you have the DSL modem built into the Wireless G router. So you would still want the Wireless G router to act as the DHCP server, and then connect one of the four ports on the DSL router to one of the four ports on the back of the Airport Extreme. The reason i say this is because I think the WAN is for direct ip connections, and sine your Wireless G router is acting as a DHCP server, you'll just want the Airport Extreme to be a client on the network like any other computer. Then set the Airport Extreme to act as a Access point and turn off it's DHCP server. That should let you have full 802.11n 5ghz goodness while still having your Wireless G DSL modem to serve your other devices. …

ah so you just plug the cable into one of the AEBS' ethernet ports instead and then set it as an extender in Airport Utility?

… Hope this helps. I really should have named this thread something more relevant. Guess I'm not as clever as I thought .

hehe nah, you gave us all your idea!

 

[Exegesis48]

No, do not set it as an extender. That's to have it extend the range of an existing wireless network. Set it as an Access point, it will pick up the DSL connection from the Wireless G and then serve it out as its own independent Wireless N network. Just name it something different so that you can identify it.

 

[skorpien]

To allow your AEBS/TC to act as a wireless access point and have another primary router doing the routing, just set your AEBS/TC's Internet Sharing to Off (Bridge Mode) in AirPort Utility. Then connect one of your router's LAN ports to one of the ports on the back of the AEBS/TC (WAN or LAN should work AFAIK) and you're set.

Also... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/671222/

 

[Testify]

I have the exact same setting with a AEBS and a G-Router works wonder.

All my Apple N products are on the AEBS and the internet is blazing fast!

The wii, ps3 and iphones are on the G-Router.