Extend Airport Extreme Network via Ethernet to Airport Express

Thanks to all contributors so far. Although I don't think I've quite followed any of the instructions as some are a bit out of date at the end of 2015, I managed to get everything working. My setup:

BT Home Hub bringing in the internet connection, wifi switched off.

Ethernet to WAN port of Time Capsule 4th Gen. Ethernet out of LAN port to...

Power line ethernet around three floors of house.

Airport Express 2nd gen and Airport Express 1st gen.

All connected through ethernet and broadcasting on one network name - apparently working perfectly as a roaming network!

If you're here because you're confused over how to get set up with multiple Apple devices I'm not surprised. It is NOT obvious. All these mentions of ethernet options do not seem to exist, whether you set up using Airport Utility with your iPhone OR your Mac. In the end the tips I have are these:

1. Factory reset everything just to be on the safe side. Press in the reset button while you switch the power on and wait till it blinks orange then let it go. It'll take a minute or so to pop up on your iPhone - not in Airport Utility but in the settings>wifi menu where it asks if you want to setup a new Airport base station.

2. Actually this should go before 1... set up one base station at a time, starting with your main one, in my case a Time Capsule wired through ethernet to the router. Once this is on and you have two green lights showing on Airport Utility ('internet' and 'Time Capsule' in my case). Obviously 'Create a network' is the right option here.

3. MOST IMPORTANT! Don't boot or reset or even try to set anything up unless your ethernet cable has been plugged in first!!! I believe that it is THIS that forces the devices to prioritise ethernet as their input rather than picking up wifi and rebroadcasting it which seems to be the default option, that is hard to avoid.

Once you've set up each sub device by wiring them directly into your main base station, you can then unplug and distribute them around the house at your power line points, they will work.

Hi Bob

Thanks for this great post. As a tech novice I found it very helpful. I have 2 questions that's confounding me and hoping you can assist.

Here's my setup

Cable modem --> Airport Extreme (5th gen) in the basement --> powerline --> Airport Express (new dual band model) 2nd floor

Last night I set up this roaming network after buying a new Express. I reset the Extreme and setup it up as my main network again. Then I setup the Express as per the directions above replication the network name, security,etc.. Once everything was configured I ran the Speedtest app on my ipad mini and iPhone 6. Tests on both devices were giving me great download speeds (at least 25-30Mps) on the 2nd floor near the Express. I had great signal strenth on my second floor as well.

Then this morning I ran a speedtest on my ipad mini and was getting extremely slow speeds. Once the app even timed out as it could not find a server. I was literally standing right next to my Express doing the test. I only got around 1Mps once I was able to run the test. When I viewed the Express setup via Airport Utility I could see the data rate was 1Mb/s with an Excellent Connection. On the contrary, my iPhone 6 speedtest showed no degradation in speed compared to last night when I set it up. When I checked the Utility is showed the iPhone's Connection was Good with a Data Rate of about 135Mb/s

Questions:

1)Why do certain wireless devices perform really poorly, even if I am standing right next to the Extreme. I have a few other IOS devices too which I am sure may experience the same slowdown.

2) Who do some devices show a "Excellent" connection but very slow data rate while others show a "Good" connection but have very high data rates?

If I cannot get this Express to work consistently across all my devices I may have to return it (though I am hoping I can crack this conundrum and keep it) Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated

Thanks

OK, so it seems everything is performing optimally. I reset both my Extreme and Express and then started with the Extreme setup. Once that was configured I setup my Express as a roaming network. I get decent wifi performance upstairs on my 2nd floor now. Previously when the setup was not working optimally I would be lucky to get 1-2Mbps download when running Speedtest.net app at the furthest point in my roaming network. Now I can get anything from 12- 20 Mbps. I suggest keep playing around and try a few resets before giving up.

Also, I have about 10 wifi connected devices but probably average running about 6-7 simultaneously.

Good luck

This is old, but it saved me some time today. Airport Utility was defaulting to "extend" and I kept getting unclearable orange lights on my AEx. Following these instructions (once I found them) took me all of 5 minutes. Apple really needs to update their stuff, becasue as far as I can tell it's pretty out of date. This stuff shouldn't be this hard to configure and it's not helpful when all the Apple doc says "Airport will configure it automatically for you", but it doesn't.

Read the article linked here – in Airport Utility, select "Create a wireless network" for the Airport Expresses rather than "Extend".

http://dafacto.com/2014/how-to-setup-a-roaming-wifi-network-over-ethernet-with-a n-airport-extreme-and-airport-express/