Possibilities with the Airport Express

[Palleraa]

Hello everyone

I'm trying to figure out the possbilities of the Airport Express. I have tried to draw up what I want and would like to know if t is possible.

I want to use the Airport express as a frontend unit because of he ability to use AirTunes. Unfortunately my HDX 1000 is not wireless (NMT to play media to my TV from my NAS). Is it possible to extend the wired LAN from my Linksys to the AE and by that enable my HDX 1000 to play content from my NAS? Please let me know if you see any other problems with this setup.

/PalleRaa

 

[masteroflondon]

The only problem I could foresee is getting the Airport to wirelessly extend the Linksys. I have set up WDS before but using all Apple stuff. I have heard problems regarding mixing manufacturers, not sure wireless extending uses standards. I have no knowledge it won't work, but suggest this is the one area where you could have a problem.

Why not cable them together and have both systems act as bridges? I have multiple Airport Express', each acting as a wired to wireless bridge in various parts of the house so there's always a strong signal available.

I also bridged the router on my Linksys so it acts as just a modem. It then hands the internet to a Time Capsule that then does the routing for wired and wifi.

 

[Palleraa]

The problem with wireing them together is that I need to single ethernet port on the Apple Express to connect to the HDX 1000.

 

[geoffreak]

Wire the HDX 1000 and Airport Express directly to your router then.

 

[slpdLoad]

I have an AE, and you can't go that direction. You can extend a WIFI signal from another Apple access point (and maybe a few Linksys models), or you can use the AE as a router by plugging it into a modem.

Your best bet is to get a long ethernet cable and plug the HDX 1000 into that. The AE can do dedicated AirTunes duty.

And just as an aside, the AE with Airport Utility stinks. Bad. I just use it for Airtunes or printing, and getting it setup takes quite a few tries. Airport Utility will often not be able to find the AE, the AE will have to be reset occasionally, etc.

It's cool for doing exactly what's on the box, but you better have some patience if you want to get fancy with the configuration.

 

[gorn]

if you have or can put dd-wrt on the linksys you could have it join the airport express network. A bit of a funny configuration as normally the wireless network would belong to the internet gateway rather than the media player, but it would be doable, with some tweaking of dhcp settings.

 

[waw74]

you can have the express join the existing network created by your other router, and when setting up make sure you check the box that says "allow ethernet clients." With joining rather than extending, you don't run into problems with routers from other manufacturers.

Then just run an ethernet cable from the express to the HDX.


*You'll probably need to wire the express to your computer for initial set up, then once configured, plug the ethernet to the HDX, and you should be good to go.

 

[plinden]

waw74 is correct. This is known as proxySTA mode (google it). You can still use the AE with AirTunes and use the USB port for a printer, and also use a switch to attach more than one device to the AE.

But the ethernet port is 100Mb/s only so you don't get full wireless N speeds from it.

 

[Palleraa]

Waw74 and plinden. You guys are my heroes

The Express is also the first AirPort Base Station to provide a new feature called ProxySTA. In this mode, the Express acts as a wireless-to-Ethernet bridge, extending your wireless network to wired clients such as a TiVo, a game console, or a room of Ethernet-networked computers. However, unlike an Express configured as a remote or relay base station in a Wireless Distribution System (WDS), which shares or extends your wireless network to both wired and wireless clients, an Express set to ProxySTA does not extend or relay the network wirelessly; it acts only as a bridge. According to Apple, the benefits of ProxySTA are easier setup—the Express acts as a simple wireless client, so you don't have to configure a WDS network—and the potential for better wired-to-wireless performance, as ProxySTA avoids the network overhead of WDS and the potential interference involved with rebroadcasting a wireless signal. In addition, ProxySTA works with both Apple and third-party wireless access points.

first hit on "ProxySTA" answered my question to the fullest. The distance between my linksys and dlink is pretty short anyway, so if i connect wireless to only the linksys should make no difference.

Btw, the HDX is only 100MBit so no big deal. Gonna be interesting to see if I can stream 1080p content this way