Is anyone successfully using Netgear WN3000RP with Airport Extreme?

As I detailed earlier in this post, I spent a good deal of time with Netgear Support trying to do what you ask, and what I wanted.

Hats off to the Netgear folks for sticking with this for well over an hour to the bitter end, but in the end, the conclusion from Netgear Support was that the Netgear product was not designed to do what the AirPort Express was designed to do.

But, you never know. Maybe something has changed and this is now possible.....(Check with Netgear Support)...... or someone else has found a way, and they will share their secret.

You can find any number of AirPort Express models for sale on Ebay from $25-50.

My biggest mistake was spending well over $100 in time trying to save $40-50. It is a lot easier simply walking around and letting wireless devices automatically switch and connect to the closest wireless access point, rather than manually switching networks all the time.

will any 802.11n airport express work?

Yes, but the A1264 version that you are asking about is only a single band device, so it can only extend the 2.4 GHz.....or.....5 GHz network, not both at the same time.

The current A1392 version is dual band, so it will extend both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz signals simultaneously.

I am using that solution, which was easy to set up right from the box.

But the elegant solution is what the older Airport Express had, whereby it would extend the range automatically without having to change the WiFi network. That is, the Airport router was always the network name which showed up in the WiFi settings screen, whether the connection from the computer was through the extender or the actual base station. That’s what I’m trying to achieve.

Any simple suggestions?

Thanks very much, Bob. I guess I’ve resigned myself to that, it’s still better than nothing, and much cheaper than today‘s Airport Express.

That’s great, thank you very much

Peter

I agree with you.

One question - will any 802.11n airport express work? I would like the type that plugs directly into a wall outlet (with no need for cable), but as I recall some older versions are not compatible.

Many thanks

Peter

Apple uses proprietary settings and software for their "extend" feature that is designed to only allow other Apple routers to connect and "extend" the network....using wireless only.

Although Netgear claims that their WN3000RP is a "universal" range extender, it would be extremely unlikely that the device would work with another Apple router. (You have to look for the disclaimers in the Netgear literature....but there are there).

While we are tempted to say that the WN3000RP is not compatbile with Apple products at all as a range extender or repeater, we will stop short since we have only tested 2 of the WN3000RP devices....none of which would work with an Apple router.

One Netgear tech we worked with said the setup "should work", but it never did. Another Netgear support tech told us that the product would not work with Apple routers, but "should" work with most other brands.

If you do find a way to configure the Netgear product to work with an Apple router, please post back with details on the configuration.

Your best bet in terms of ease of installation would be to use an Apple AirPort Express or another AirPort Extreme, which will work with your existing AirPort Extreme to "extend" the wireless network. This would be true whether you plan to connect the extender using wireless only or use a wired Ethernet connection.

The solution is as follows:

1. Set up airport extreme network as a normal network, as per the Apple guide.
2. Check the connection with your devices (iMac, iPad, iPhone, PC, etc)
3. Do a factory reset on the Netgear extender and power on.
4. Using your PC or Apple iMac (or similar), find the device using wi-fi set up. and connect to it.
5. You should be able to logon to the device set-up page via the internet.
6. Configure the Netcomm device - prompts are reasonably easy to follow, and then connect the device to the Apple network (from step 1)
7. Use your devices to find the extender - it will have the same same as the original network, with the suffix 'EXT'. You will need to 'join' the new network.

I have used this solution just now to successfully connect my new Apple Time Capsule and my Netgear extender. Hope this helps.

If this works.....I have tried 2 Netgear sampes so far and neither has worked.....despite nice efforts on Netgear support's part......you will not be able to walk your laptop from the area near the "main" router to the "extender" and stay on the same network.

You have to manually switch your laptop from one network to another with the "EXT" added as you move from one area to another.

Just rename the SSID on the extender to the same one as your main WiFi SSID, that will resolve your problem as it did mine.

Netgear support advised that I should return the product for a refund after we tried 2 different samples of the WN3000RP.

Renaming the SSID did not work.

Hi all,

after putting off the connection to a new time capsule for a few weeks so i could read all the background, i finally got the time capsule set up on my windows machine and then just started with netgear walk through at http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/20912/~/how-to-setup-your-netgear- wn3000rp-universal-wifi-range-extender%3F and using my mac air to wirelessly connect now have an extended wifi network using a bridged linksys X3000 as modem, cascading to the 2Tb Time Capsule, with a usb printer and many other peripherals running off the TC, and the extended network into the far reaches of my house.

So Bob, to answer a question which is not actually your question, but is nevertheless very close, yes, I am successfully running the netgear extender WN3000RP through a time capsule (not strictly airport extreme).

For anyone who has Mac Address isolation (timed access in airport language) setup on their airport router.... Be sure to add the virtual mac address of each device you wish to pass through the range extender to your list of allowed devices on your airport router. For my setup the Netgear range extended changed the first three MAC address segments to the following: 02:0F:B5:

Try adding another entry into your allowed devices on your airport with those three segments fixed and the last three segments from the actual device MAC address and you may solve the issue.

I was struggling with this for a while and getting the same results as lots of other folks when first trying to set this up. I was connecting to the _EXT network fine with my devices by using a manual IP address (DHCP wouldn't allocate an IP) but i was unable to i added these entries to my allowed devices on the airport router. Incidently once I'd added the revised MAC address entries, DHCP would issue IP address to all the devices fine. Seems the issue is that the Netgear extender uses virtual MAC address for all devices passing through it and therefore the virtual addresses need to be added to your whitelist is you are using MAC address isolation (times access) etc.

Hope this helps anyone with a similar issue.

Thanks anthdoyle,

This was exactly my issue. To find out the MAC address you need to add access for, temporarily disable Timed Access in the Aiport Router, then reboot the airport router. Now click on the icon of the router on the initial window/screen of the Aiport Utility. This should give you the MAC address of all the devices trying to connect. Indeed there should be two with no IP assigned. One should correspond to the initial (physical) MAC address of the Negear Extender (mine starts with 9C:D3:6D), and the second, indeed starting with 02:0F:B5, is the virtual MAC address of the extended network. You must allow both of these in the Timed Access control list of the Airport router.

When I did this, after a couple of reboot of the extender (including one to update the firmware of the extender), everything fell into place. DHCP works, etc.