Q: Extend 3 Airport Base Stations, Wired and Wirelessly
Hey everyone,
I've got a question regarding the setup of my base stations that I had before, but can't seem to return to, so I thought I'd ask for help.
I've got a 2-story home where I get poor wifi on the top floor. My cable modem is in the basement and connected to an Airport Extreme as my main router. I then purchased a new Airport Time Capsule, which I placed on the top floor by my iMac (short run for Time Machine updates, beam-forming to rest of house, etc.). It's connected to the Extreme (wired through ethernet) and set to extend the network. This has really helped upstairs as my wifi signal is much stronger.
The problem is with my third base station. I've got an Airport Express that I've got in my detached garage. It's there mostly to stream to my speakers when I'm working there, but also to wirelessly extend the network in the garage and backyard. Also, it is placed the furthest away from the main router, Airport Extreme. Prior to 2 months ago, I had the network working beautifully. Extreme doing wifi for my basement devices, wired to my Time Capsule providing great coverage to the rest of the house, then the Express wirelessly connected to the Time Capsule, providing coverage in the garage and yard. Airport Utility actually showed this:
Extreme ------ wired ------ Time Capsule - - - wireless - - - Express
This reminds me of something being "daisy-chained".
Now, my Express is messing up (after a software update??) and no longer wirelessly extends the Time Capsule's signal. I've tried to restart the Express and get it back up and connected to the Time Capsule, but it always wants to try and extend the Extreme's wireless signal (which is very poor at that distance). It shows this on Airport Utility as well. This reminds me of the Extreme being a hub of a wheel and the other base stations just being spokes only connecting to that hub. I want to get it back to the old setting, so is there something I'm missing here? Bridge mode? I'm not sure.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you!
AirPort Express 802.11N (2nd generation)
Posted on Jan 2, 2014 8:00 PM
I've got a 2-story home where I get poor wifi on the top floor. My cable modem is in the basement and connected to an Airport Extreme as my main router. I then purchased a new Airport Time Capsule, which I placed on the top floor by my iMac (short run for Time Machine updates, beam-forming to rest of house, etc.). It's connected to the Extreme (wired through ethernet) and set to extend the network.
Since the new Time Capsule is connected back to the AirPort Extreme by Ethernet, the TC should NOT be configured to "Extend a wireless network." This option is only meant to be used with the connection between Apple base stations will be a wireless one. Instead the TC should be configured to "Create a wireless network" and both base stations should be configured as a roaming network.
The problem is with my third base station. I've got an Airport Express that I've got in my detached garage. It's there mostly to stream to my speakers when I'm working there, but also to wirelessly extend the network in the garage and backyard. Also, it is placed the furthest away from the main router, Airport Extreme.
You basically have two choices with the AirPort Express if your goal is to extend the wireless network: 1) Connect the Express back to the Extreme using a second Ethernet cable, and then, reconfigure the Express as another piece of your existing roaming network, or 2) Leave the Extreme & TC in a roaming network configuration and configure either the Extreme or the TC (depending on which two are closest together in range) with the Express in an "extended" network.
The main issue here is that to successfully extend (either the Extreme or the TC) with the Express, the Express needs to be within a certain signal quality range of the base station that it is extending to have adequate bandwidth performance ... especially for streaming HD video. Please take a look at the following AirPort User Tip for details on base station placement for extended wireless networks.
Posted on Jan 5, 2014 8:03 PM