Airport Extreme Basestation as a wired<->wireless bridge?

R

robjs

Registered
Hi,

I'm looking into getting a new laptop, and am pretty set on getting a Powerbook 12" (I've chosen this over the iBook because it seems more sturdy to me, and it's got the Bluetooth, wlan, and larger HDD, not to mention the faster processor - anyway).

I've currently got an 802.11b Wireless network in my house, but it doesn't reach to my room (I currently live with my parents, and siblings) - so I'd like to put an 802.11g wired <-> wireless bridge in.

I've looked at the specifications of the Airport Express, it mentions using as a router, which would be useful to me when I move out (~11 months time), but I'd also like the bridge for now. I can only seem to find little snippets about the bridging mode:

From an online store:
The combination of antenna and the AirPort Extreme Base Station's bridge mode enables new applications that were not accessible to WLAN access points before.
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From another forum:
From what I have been able to find online the first generation Airport Base Stations where indeed based on the Karlnet Bridge and used their software, those are the Grey/Silver Airport Base stations. From what I can tell the new generation Airports (White, Clear) have proprietary software but are basically doing the same thing that the Karlnet Bridge/Router was doing in the grey ones and this extends to the Airport Express. From what I can see on the configuration software there is no place to set the unit to either bridge or not bridge other than to act as a relay station for a wireless network so the unit must be doing internal bridging as well as routing as a default and perhaps a bridge is the solution. Of course I will pass this information to our engineers and if you have any comments that you want me to pass to them Don please contact me via email as before. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

In one of the announcements about the Airport Express I found the following:

If you're using AirPort Express as a base station, you'd plug your Internet connection into it via its included Ethernet port. But if your main base station is an AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express, you can also use the AirPort Express as a wireless bridge -- just plug it in somewhere else in your house, and attach any Ethernet-based device to it. That device will now be on your network, even though it's nowhere near the rest of your stuff.
Click to expand...

I can't really afford to get one and find that it doesn't work. :( So, can anyone lend me a little advice? It'd be much appreciated.

~r
 
Looks like I didn't Google hard enough, I stumbled upon a review at ArsTechnica about the Airport Express that says the following:

The Express is ready to serve as a WAP out of the box (albeit one that anyone can join)
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Which implies that it'll do exactly what I want, since the wired<->wireless bridge terminology would be the same as an access point.

I'd still be interested to find out whether I could do the same with the Airport Extreme because I've found a few antenna for this model and I'd be able to extend the range if I wanted to in the future.

~r
 
robjs said:
I can't really afford to get one and find that it doesn't work. :( So, can anyone lend me a little advice? It'd be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

I just bought an Airport Express for the dual purpose of creating a super home sound system, and connecting my PS2 to it (making the Express into a wireless <> wired bridge). So far I haven't been very successful with the second part (although the Airtunes part is simply awesome).

Here's my findings so far:
1. The Base Station I use is a Snow. I used to connect the PS2 to the LAN port via a very long ethernet cable.
2. The Express allows two configurations: as a member of an existing wireless network and as separate network connected via WDS. The difference from what I can figure is that as part of an existing network, it wont share the internet connectivity via either ethernet or wireless. As part of a WDS network (as a remote or relay base station) its supposed to on-share the internet but only over wireless... or at least according to the documentation.
3. The Snow Base Station is the b standard, not g, so it wont play happily in the WDS setup. The option can be selected in the Aiport Utility, but disables when I come back to it. Furthermore, restarting one or the other with WDS enabled knocks the other Base station off the air (cant find it with a scan).

My conclusion so far (more investigation needed) is that I will need another Express or Extreme station to connect the two networks via WDS. This should mean that my current Express becomes a remote base station that bridges internet into the LAN/WAN port.

Failing that, I could also get a USB-to-Ethernet bridge to connect my PS2, but at extra cost, this may also not work any better. I am leaning towards an Extreme Base Station anyway, mostly for better hardware with faster network speeds (and BT internet for my Palm!).

I'll keep researching and report any new findings.

Rob
 
Rob,

The conclusion that you've come up with sounds sane to me, the issue I have is slightly different however. Where you're trying to run the setup with the device connected to the {Express,Extreme} base station, I'm planning to run it the other way round, an uplink to my switch running into the base station and it basically acting as an access point for my network.

I was checking out the Airport Extreme with an Onmi aerial.

~r
 
I'm not sure if this completely addresses your issue but : AirPort Express is 802.11g compliant. 802.11g (aka AirPort Extreme) is 802.11b backwards-compatible (this is the IEEE 802.11g standard, not a function of Apple's cleverness).

The range of AirPort Express is 50 feet in -g mode and 150 feet in -b mode.

So, it's really a toss up. If you like to think your internet connection exceeds 11 megabit by all means get an APEx base station. I would suggest, however, that you get an AirPort Express box and then, if necessary, use it in 11 megabit mode to extend its range. It's slightly cheaper.

AirPort Express 129 $
AirPort Extreme 199 $

I use AirPort Express and I live on the 22nd floor of my building. I can turn it on and use it in 100% power mode from the bank of a nearby canal.

You can also use it as a wireless access point if you connect it via ethernet to your router. Just make sure you don't enable the AirPort Express' IP distribution and you let your router handle that, otherwise your WiFi-connected computers won't be assigned IPs by your router, so you might (read:will) have connection problems within your LAN.

I use it as a WAP in both my apartment (D-Link router) and my parent's place (SMC Barricade).
 
Michael,

Thanks, that's exactly the information that I wanted to find out :) I don't run any kind of DHCP and I wouldn't want NAT on the Airport {Extreme, Express}, I basically just need it as an access point. Thanks for your post :)

I'm now trying to decide between the Extreme and the Express, I need to research the extension aerials I can use with both.

~r
 
Another easy one. AirPort Extreme accepts antennae, Express does not ;)

That's mostly becaue Apple hopes if you buy an AirPort Express it's either to stream music or to extend an existing network; it's not really "designed" to be used as a full-time base station (though I certainly plan to use it as such when I move entirely wireless).
 
Thanks again michael, I didn't read the specifications carefully enough, now to decide which model of the Extreme I want :)

~r
 
Any time. One thing I wanted to add, in general, about AirPort Express (I don't know if this is aplicable to other AirPort base stations acting as WAPs but I assume it must be) : if you use a router with DHCP, as most people do, you will notice that your WAP transmitter (like my AirPort Express) has an IP lease. This means it will show up in your Apple Remote Desktop scanner (hostname-less), router configuration and any other network scanner.

Using my D-Link DI 604 I can't get my Express MAC address statically mapped to an IP address. This may be a fault in my router, but who knows, since static IP addressing has always worked for my other computers.

The extension of this is that I've had some issues addressing static IP addresses to my wireless nodes. After some fiddling I managed to get it to work but it's something to keep in mind. (My fix was to let my Express get a dynamic IP lease; having my wired nodes statically mapped to low numbers, letting my Express take a mid-range number, then mapping wireless nodes to high numbers above the Express' IP.)

Welcome to wireless !
 
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