Smcelroy

Q: Will my 8 year old Airport Express work as a wifi bridge to provide an ethernet port for a wired device? In other words can I use my airport express instead of running another ethernet cable? I use an Airport Extreme as my wireless base station.

Will my 8 year old Airport Express work as a wifi bridge to provide an ethernet port for a wired device? In other words can I use my airport express instead of running another ethernet cable through the house? I use an Airport Extreme as my wireless base station and it covers the whole house so there is plenty of wifi signal in the room where I need the Ethernet port. I need the ethernet port to plug in a new Denon AV receiver but I want to avoid drilling holes etc.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Kind regards,

Steve

Airport Express (8 years old), Ethernet extender?

Posted on Apr 12, 2012 9:09 PM

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Q: Will my 8 year old Airport Express work as a wifi bridge to provide an ethernet port for a wired device? In other words can I use ... more

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  • by Tesserax,Solvedanswer

    Tesserax Tesserax Apr 13, 2012 9:11 AM in response to Smcelroy
    Level 9 (54,786 points)
    Wireless
    Apr 13, 2012 9:11 AM in response to Smcelroy

    The older 802.11g AirPort Express Base Station (AX) does NOT support reconfiguration as a wireless Ethernet bridge like the newer models. Apple calls this configuration a ProxySTA.

     

    The only option to enable the Ethernet port on your model would be to configure the AX with another AirPort base station into a WDS.

  • by Smcelroy,

    Smcelroy Smcelroy Apr 13, 2012 8:22 PM in response to Tesserax
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 13, 2012 8:22 PM in response to Tesserax

    Thanks for the info. I setup my even older Airport Extreme (dome shaped) as a WDS main and the setup my AE as a WDS relay. Both are 802.11g. After rebooting both devices several times it finally worked. I now have ethernet in my lounge. I bought a £20 netgear ethernet switch today and my Denon AV receiver, Apple TV, PS3 & LG tv are all working beautifully :-) I can now enjoy all the extra features that will only work via ethernet internet and I'm controlling it all with my iPhone and iPad from anywhere in the house. Sweet!

     

    Two things to mention, you must enter the Airport ID number of the Extreme (main) into the Express (relay) and and vica versa. You must also put identical Authorization info into both Airport devices.

     

    The other thing is that the Green & Yellow status LED on the Airport Express is constantly flashing yellow. This normally indicates that the Express isn't synced wirelessly to the Airport Extreme Base Station. This really threw me as I assumed it wasn't going to work. So after 2 hours of thinking it won't work I thought 'What the ****" and plugged in an Ethernet cable to try it out and to my surprise it worked a treat! Despite the flashing yellow LED (supposed to be green).

     

    This saved me having to either drilling holes and crawl through the loft to run a new Ethernet cable to the lounge or forking out £100 for a Powerline Home Theatre Ethernet Extender Kit.

     

    On a final note.... Since reconfiguring both Airports to WDS mode my internet speed is faster. So It's been an all round success today despite it being Friday the 13th! :-)

     

    Anyway, I hope this might help anyone else get more out of their older Airport devices.

     

    Thanks again,

    Steve

  • by Smcelroy,

    Smcelroy Smcelroy Apr 14, 2012 11:04 PM in response to Smcelroy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 14, 2012 11:04 PM in response to Smcelroy

    Latest update... 15/4/2012

     

    Re Flashing yellow LED...

    The status LED on my Airport Express has turned green this morning. Not sure why it took so long to do so. The ethernet port is still working well (it worked when the LED was flashing yellow) and I've now updated all of my AV devices including firmware updates. This has added even more new funtions, particularly with the PS3 and Apple TV.

     

    Feel's like Christmas :-)

     

    Thanks again to Tesserax and the Apple support community. Nice work.

     

    Steve