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Moved to Wi-Fi community

I just moved to a senior living community (Affinity), that uses Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet.


In my old condo, I had a Cable/Internet/Phone modem in the basement where my iMac & Netgear wireless router were. My wife's iMac was on the 2nd floor, and I had an Airport Express on the main floor along with a Blu-Ray player and a Wii. I had cat-5 cables connecting the router to both computers, to the Airport Express, and to the Blu-Ray player. My Wii, my iPhone, and my iPad used the Wi-Fi. We both had printers connected to our computers via cat-5, although my printer also can use Wi-Fi.


We moved in. I connected our computers to Affinity (unsecured network). I connected my Kodak ESP 7250 printer to Affinity. But I haven't been able to get our computers to find it. I printed out its network configuration that says it is connected with 192.168.1.128.


I also noticed that iTunes doesn't see either iPad nor iPhone unless I plug them into my computer.


I haven't plugged in my Netgear router. But my next step was to plug in my Airport Express. I checked KeyChain and typed in Airport to see 3 copies of "Howard Brazee's Network" (all with the same password (WPA??)), two copies of Netgear, and one copy of Airport Express. So I tried setting up my printer to that network. It failed, and printing its configuration it sees it is Not Connected to "Howard Brazee's Network" with WPA2-AES & PSK - with no IP address. Airport utility saw a wireless client with a 169.254.2.150 IP address. Not good. I tried to connect my Wii to my network without success.


I noticed that my phone, my pad, and worse of all, my mac were connected to "Howard Brazee's Network", and obviously not to the Internet. So I unplugged the Air Port Express. I haven't yet tried my Wii with the Affinity network.


While it would be nice to not be open to everybody on the Affinity network, that isn't necessary. I don't really need to have my Blu-Ray connected, but I need my printer connected to our printers, and want my phone and pad visible in iTunes (can I control whether it is mine or my wife's???), and would enjoy having the Wii connected to the Internet.


Oh, I haven't tried connecting one printer via cat-5 to one computer. If that is the only way to get it visible to both computers, I will do it, we shared printers before when one was out of ink.


I have shared this issue on Fidonet, but haven't yet resolved it.


Any suggestions?

OS X Mountain Lion, Home workgroup

Posted on Mar 15, 2013 12:42 PM

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4 replies

Mar 19, 2013 5:47 PM in response to Howard Brazee

Can you use the Airport Express to connect to the Affinity WiFi network and bridge that to the ethernet port. Now plug that ethernet into your Netgear WAN port. Then have your Netgear WiFi create a private network just for your stuff.


The only downside I see is you will now have 2 layers of NAT to navigate which may affect things like Back-to-My-Mac or maybe some network gaming consoles. But for the most part it should give you a private network where you stuff is not seen by your fellow residents.

Mar 19, 2013 6:39 PM in response to BobHarris

How do I use the Airport Express to bridge to the Affinity Wi-Fi?



It appears that sometimes I connect to different repeaters, or something else changed as I had to tell Affinity that I accept it's service again. At any rate iTunes is telling me that I have 3 hours remaining in my 2nd devices IOS upgrade. Or maybe someone is watching a movie.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4902326

Mar 19, 2013 7:28 PM in response to Howard Brazee

How do I use the Airport Express to bridge to the Affinity Wi-Fi?


I take it back. Doing a little google searching, and it appears an Airport Express has 2 options. One is Client Mode that only provides printer and iTunes audio output. The other is WDS which requires a Airport Extreme base stations.


However, the theory may still work, but you might need a different WiFi to ethernet bridging device. Maybe the Netgear can be put into a bridge mode that connects to WiFi and redistributes via WiFi to the Airport Extreme that you then use the AX as a router to create your own private network. Or research and get another device to feed the Netgear router.

Moved to Wi-Fi community

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