Setting Up An Airport Network

1623 days ago in How do I?, Tutorials by Brent | 13 Comments

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UPDATE: Post pictures were lost in a crash, but the large flickr pics are still available. Just click on the broken pic link to see the large version. Sorry for the inconvenience. – Brent

I don’t know about you, but I have had my Airport Extreme and Express for a while now and never really took the time to get both of them working correctly. They worked for what I needed them to do, but it was never 100% successful. With my crazy schedule, I had just let myself be okay with the flashing yellow lights on the front of both units. Well, last night I decided to “conquer the beasts” and get all set up as well as I could. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be. What I found out was that I couldn’t just let it set things up automatically. Here’s what I ended up doing. Hopefully this will help those of you out there that were in my same boat.

FYI: This is a 3 page article (to keep the scrolling to a minimum).

Let’s start by opening up the Airport Utility. As you can see by this screenshot, I have an Extreme in my home office (Hooked to a Dell 1600n Laser Printer) and an Express in the living room (hooked up to my stereo for AirTunes).

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Let’s start with the Extreme since it’s the one that creates the network. To set it up completely, you will need to do a “Manual Setup”. Click the button and let’s get configuring.

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Here’s my AirPort configuration pages. I have named my network “SPORE”, my base station “Office” and selected my time zone accordingly. You can set these things to whatever you choose. If you have an AirPort Express, the most important screen to pay attention to in this menu is the next screen.

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The AirPort/Wireless Screen: At the top of this screen, it is important that you set the wireless mode to “Create a wireless network”. This will allow for your Extreme Base Station to be the parent of a WDS network which is what the Express needs to connect to and for you to use all of it’s features correctly. The second item to set on this screen is the security settings. Most likely, if you have not set this, your base station will be flashing a yellow light warning you that your network isn’t encrypted. You can tell your base station to ignore this and it will give you a green light, but we’ll set it just because it’s a good idea to have a secure wireless network to protect your privacy (and your bandwidth).

Note that we have selected a “WPA/WPA2 Personal” security protocol and I have put in a connection password. Be sure you remember this information for when you want to connect anything else to the network (i.e. laptop, AirPort Express, etc.).

At the bottom of this screen there’s a button that says “Wireless Options”. I have set mine like this:

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Multicast Rate: This is the minimum speed in Mbits/s that the base station will allow for connections. By default, it is set at 2Mbit/s, but can be lowered to 1Mbit/s for longer range connections. If you have a lot of base stations in close proximity (like in my small neighborhood – I can see 9 networks from my living room) the density setting should be adjusted upward. Setting high multicast rate can also be a quasi-security measure.

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  • http://www.jeremysalter.com Jeremy Salter – a work in progress

    Brent, do you think that they will integrate these two products at any point? I’m kind of holding out on buying the new Extreme because I really want it to have the AirTunes feature…personally, I don’t see why they wouldn’t combine them…

  • http://www.iboughtamac.com Brent

    I don’t see why they wouldn’t either. It does make perfect sense for sure. The express does have it’s handy uses though, like having the Extreme in a completely different location than your home stereo system and the travel perks (wireless in a hotel). But I do agree, having AirTunes in the Extreme router would make a lot of sense.

  • http://ericksonstudio.com Paul Erickson

    Write them and suggest it. Sometimes the most obvious ideas get overlooked. “Power to the people!” and all that. :)

  • David Carrrington

    On a different but related subject: I bought a Time Machine, which set up great and has subsequently worked perfectly. But I live in a big old apartment and needed to extend coverage away from my study to the living room, on a different floor and bought two Expresses to do so. Set them up but then they kept dropping out, flashing orange lights, couldn’t see them on the Airport Utility, etc. But then I called them completely different names, as per your tutorial, and gave them different passwords too. Problem solved! One thing though – instead of getting them to “join a network” I selected “Extend a network” – what’s the difference?

  • http://www.iboughtamac.com Brent

    David,

    I believe ‘join’ will just make it a access point. I used mine in this mode for my XBOX 360 to connect to my network as well as playing stuff through my stereo. Extend does just that. Takes your WiFi signal and extends it further. For those with large areas to cover with a WiFi signal.

    I think that’s it… anyone want to correct me if I’m wrong?

  • http://www.letsbookhotel.com Discounted Hotels

    I agree with Paul… This is a really good idea. Sometimes the best ideas get overlooked.

  • Natalie

    Thanks so much for your helpful screen pictures – it enabled me to set up the wireless network, without any prior knowledge of a mac!!
    Brilliant… I was ready to kill the computer, but now, it's great!

  • filmshot

    I have for the last 2 days tried to get my Airport Express to hook up with the Internet to no avail, it is constantly blinking orange. I am able to stream my iTunes songs to my stereo without a problem … though it still flashes orange. Since I am only using Airport Express do you by chance have any ideas to rectify this issue?

  • Filmshot

    I have for the last 2 days tried to get my Airport Express to hook up with the Internet to no avail, it is constantly blinking orange. I am able to stream my iTunes songs to my stereo without a problem … though it still flashes orange. Since I am only using Airport Express do you by chance have any ideas to rectify this issue?

  • http://iboughtamac.com brentspore

    I think it's a one or the other type of thing. You can't have it as a streaming point for iTunes AND a wifi hotspot if I remember correctly. That could be different now but I think that's what mine does.

  • filmshot

    You are correct, however, I am only trying to use it for an internet connection. I only tried the iTunes streaming to make sure everything was operational. Undoubtably some small thing I'm over looking.

  • http://iboughtamac.com brentspore

    Yeah, I remember fighting with it for quite a while until I got it just right. Now I don't touch the settings for fear of having to go through the saga again. :)

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