I have a network problem, perhaps you can help.
The Aim:
Set up one single wireless home network, extending throughout the house and into the garden, available to numerous devices with AirTunes integration.
Main hub (Virgin Superhub) cannot currently extend throughout the house, and is fixed in one location there is also one mac without a wireless card that has to be elsewhere in the house and cannot connect directly through ethernet to the mainhub.
Ingredients:
Virgin Superhub connected via cable in “West Wing”
2 (movable) airport express (let’s call them AX1 and AX2
If needed an old (mushroom) airport extreme basestation
If needed, a NetGear wired router.
Various wireless devices:Laptops, iPhones etc.
Important: One mac (‘Big Mac’) without wireless card far from the main hub.
2 printers with temperamental wireless functionality rather use wired ((1 USB, 1 network) )
Issues/Attempts:
So far… Superhub works fine. Setting up AX1 to ‘join a wireless network’ and physically wiring printers to it works fine. I’m not sure if this is actually extending the network or simply joining it.
Problems: I got AX2 to connect Big Mac to it with network cable then set up like AX1 to connect to superhub). However it drops all the time, I think it is attempting to connect to Superhub (and failing due to distance) rather than using the much closer AX1. I was hoping that AX2 could relay into the garden but it’s not even connecting itself.
So.. I think I need to set up a WDS network with a main node, and wireless remote (or relay?) clients.
But PROBLEMS.
1) I want a single network not multiple, and the Superhub does not seem to have WDS functionality I may be wrong.
2) I’ve followed instructions on setting up a WDS network with AX1 (and also with the Airport network connected to Superhub), which seems like the thing to do. Using an airport utility, I set up a main node, added wireless clients with relevant MAC addresses, but the AXs when setup to participate, restart, blink amber and are unreachable on airport utility, requiring a forced reset to get them back. so something’s amiss.
3) I need to make sure WDS will work with all devices happily.
4) I need to use AX2 as a way to getting Big Mac online (and happily part of the network) through a wired connection. WDS (or any solution) must be able to sort this, as well as extending the signal to the garden.
That’s it I think!
Any help will definitely be appreciated and may be rewarded.
Milton
Did you ever solve your problem? What kind of distances are you dealing with? I have a similar setup (at least in routers. I only have 2, but my house is probably smaller). Mine currently doesn’t work well because I have not moved the 2nd router (I am not using AXs, but most wireless routers have similar functionality) away from the first, which actually causes radio interference. Plus, my internet provider is a lost cause (although, I will give them some credit, I need to upgrade my cable modem), but things do work. I set both wireless routers up as access points, not routers. I think you can do that with AXs as well. So I suspect you really just want the one router and two APs. The APs obviously need the same IP address as your network, but you can then even have a hard-linked router serve up DHCP and so forth. I’ll have to check my setup when I get home, but basically it turns off all the routing functionality. And that sounds pretty much like what you are looking for, unless I’m missing something. Of course, the one difference is that both my wireless routers are hard-wired to my network. If you are looking to just extend wireless without running wires, you really need a repeater, and I don’t know how well AX’s do as repeaters. Apparently, if you want to work it that way, you might need to make one AX connected directly to your cable modem and the other should then work as a repeater. But with your current setup, others who’ve tried it exactly the way you are describing said it doesn’t work that well, although AirTunes should still work.
Thanks Brandon. Distances are a matter of 5 meters between ports believe it or not. Thick Victorian walls and I believe a west London nexus of crossed wi-fi signals. I used to have no problems with wired routers but the wired relaying works okay but there are sill dead spots in a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 routers. Ridiculous! Thanks for the info, will investigate further!