Q: Using Airport to extend my nextwork

However, I would like to eliminate the Netgear and just us the Extreem and Airport TC and perferablly have just one network

This will be amazingly easy to do if you have a Mac running Lion, Mountain Lion or Mavericks. Might that be the case?

is there a way to back up the WD My Book with the TC so all my pictures, songs, and videos will be backed up

Yes, if you plan to use Time Machine to back up the Mac to the TC......and......the WD My Book has been formatted to use Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

If yes, then Time Machine will back up both your Mac and the WD drive automatically, once you tell it to.

The firmware level of the AE is the latest but what hardware version is it??

You might consider swapping the AE and TC.. and use the other in place of the Netgear.

Either setup is probably pretty well equivalent. But it helps if you put the best item for the role in the best position.

Since you have ethernet link though, this is easy.. and the speeds should be very good.

Do not extend the wifi network.. that slows it down.

Use what is called roaming network. That means both routers (and the netgear can also do this.. it is not brand specific) create a wireless network.. of the same name.. = SSID in netgear. Same wireless security.. should be WPA2 personal = WPA2 TKIP/AES in Netgear.. and same password.

The netgear may still be useful in this setup for some of the less apple stuff... xbox bluray etc.

Trial and error on that one.

The Apple doco is a bit out of date but the idea is still correct.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4260

 

Finally, is there a way to back up the WD My Book with the TC so all my pictures, songs, and videos will be backed up and I don't have to put them back on the Mac?

With the MyBook, I get confused by all the models.. is this plugged into the computer by USB??

If it is an external drive, then you can simply open your TM and check the list of exclusions.. by default the USB drive is on the exclusion list.. you simply remove it from exclusion and it will then be included on the next TM backup.

This will be amazingly easy to do if you have a Mac running Lion, Mountain Lion or Mavericks. Might that be the case?

Hi - first post

and I am sorry that it had to be one that hijacks yours KATMAT4!!

Bob - you seem to be the man in the know!! and I am a total newb!! that is running mavericks

I currently have a Billion wireless router - 7404VGOX

Airport Time Capsule - Model 4th Generation

Airport Extreme - Model 5th Generation

1 x MacBook Air

1 x Windows Laptop

1 x iMac

iphone & ipads etc

The wireless router is in the office along with the Time Capsule which is bridged and connected by ethernet

The Extreme is in the other end of the house wirelessly extending.

I have it set up as a roaming network.

Do you think this is the best set up, or would you suggest doing it differently?

I have a Smart TV with hard drive connected and a Media Centre with an inbuilt 2TB SATA drive, which were connected to the Billion before getting the Airport things.. Is there a way that everyone in the house can access the files on the media centre?

I have an old Airport express A1088, can anything be done with it?!?!

THanks sooooo much!!!

Best Buy staff seem to be less than educated on the ins and outs of the products they sell.

Anyhow the Gen5 TC will work fine with a Gen5 AE which is the one you have.

You can do exactly as you wanted.

So, can I keep my AE in my basement (hard wired to the Modem and Mac and sometimes used for wifi in the basement for our apple tv, blue ray, etc....) then put the new TC upstairs (ethernet wired to the extreme) so I have a more powerful signal upstairs for every

thing and would the back up for mac still work ok?

This is fine.

Simply setup the TC upstairs in bridge mode, and use create a wireless network with the same name and same security setup as the AE downstairs.. that is the best possible setup.

You can completely remove the Netgear as I understand it.. unless it is the modem.. in which it has to stay.

KATMAT4 wrote:

 

And yet another question or two....do my IP addresses have to be the same for both routers?  Right now the last digit(s) are different. 

They must be different. Same IP means clash and there will be flashing lights and warning messages all over the place.

Also, what's this 5ghz network thing.  Do I need to set that up for both as well?  I started to, but then it looks like I'm back to having 2 networks to use.

 

Thanks again.....seems like I'm still a few settings away have this being 100%.  Although I'm at least able to access the internet.

The apple routers have two wireless bands.. 2.4ghz and 5ghz.. if you use a single name it will be treated as one wireless network.. if you give a different name to 5ghz then it will be treated as two networks.

You choose.. !!

If you wonder why you don't have high speed, it is because your computer chooses the best signal.. which is 2.4ghz.. and it will often give poor speed.. that is the cost you pay for it to be automatic.

Both routers should have the same names for wireless.

If you name the two bands differently on one router they should be named the same on the other.. if you use a single network name.. same same on everything.

Now what is 5ghz.. that my friend is your high speed wireless.. AC wireless only exists on 5ghz. There is no high speed on standard 2.4ghz.

How will you know which device the signals are off.. well very high speed can only be the AC TC.

But on the computer at least you hold the option key when you click the wifi icon.

You will get a heap more info.

BSSID is the MAC address of the wireless. You can look it up.. each wireless AP will give you the list of its MAC addresses and then you will know which one.. but the idea is you don't worry.. the computer will simply pick the best.

It is useless doing this.

I so see in my "Desktop" that my Time Machine is listed under "Shared".  When I right click on that and "get info" under "more info" it continuously says "fetching".  Not sure if anything of that is related or not but that I'd put it out there.

It just doesn't work.. same on all my computers.. the Mac cannot give you that info so it will be fetching forever.. it doesn't even time out.

When I click on "Time Machine" in the Applications folder, I get a message that says "Can't connect to a current time machine back up disk".

This is traditional TC disk problem.. been around since Lion and progressively worsened through ML and now Mavericks.

Reboot the TC.. does it now work?

If you are on Mavericks you might need to manually mount the drive.. ie using Go, Connect to Server in finder.

Sorry I cannot see your OS.. if you already told us.. what OS is on the computer?

In Mavericks it is tricky.

You sometimes need to use the full domain name..

So AFP://TCnetworkname.local

If you want to see the actual network name.. see below.

The network name is the same as the TC name if you included spaces and apostrophe as apple wizard will suggest.

ie Fred Blog's Airport Time Capsule.. which is hopelessly wrong btw.. please make all names short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric.

In network terms that name is translated to Fred-Blogs-Airport-Time-Capsule

Open the Network Utility and run netstat.

This will give you a stack of info.. and buried in there is your actual TC name and domain.

My TC name of course is correct.. short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric so I have less trouble.

In the netbios it shows as tcgen4.local

So make the command AFP://tcgen4.local and the it should mount.. after a reboot or two.