Setting up roaming network going through Linksys RV082

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Setting up roaming network going through Linksys RV082

Aloha everyone,

I've been reading a lot and thought I had a handle on this but as I started dismantling my current wireless system it dawned on me that I really don't have a clue as to what I'm doing 😁 I've tried searching and found a few tidbits here and there but nothing that hits my situation square on. That said, I'm searchically challenged and may have missed an article somewhere.

My goal is simple. Set up a roaming network using the following devices. A first generation Airport Extreme 802.11N, a first generation Airport Express 802.11N, and a second generation Airport Express 802.11N. (I also have an old Airport Express 802.11g that could be thrown in the mix along with the first generation (flying) saucer if need be, but I doubt they are necessary.)

My biggest question is can I set this network up coming from the Linksys to the airports individually, or do I HAVE to go to the Airport Extreme and then out to the two Expresses. The Airport Extreme is currently set up in the main living room and is providing wired internet to a Mac Mini, a TV, and a stereo so I'd really prefer to leave it there if at all possible.

I'd like to put one Express downstairs in the electronics room where the Linksys lives and the home stereo amp is for air tunes.

The other Express will need to go at the far end of the house to extend coverage there. Fortunately I have Cat 5 pretty much everywhere.

If there is no way to go directly from the Linksys to all three devices then no worries and thanks for looking. I can follow one of the KBs on how to run everything from the Linksys to the Extreme and the Extreme to the two Expresses.

If it is possible to go direct from the Linksys to each unit, any advice would be GREATLY appreciated ;0)

Not sure if it matters, the Linksys is in DHCP mode.

Thanks so much!

Bill

Hoping for

Linksys--->AEBS

Linksys--->Express

-----------------------------

not wanting to have to

Linksys--->AEBS--->Express

--->Express

MBP 2.4, Mac OS X (10.5.8), iPhone 3GS too ;0)

Posted on Jul 19, 2013 11:22 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

LaPastenague

Level 9

67,208 points

Jul 20, 2013 12:25 AM in response to AQ Bill

I'm searchically challenged

We can get you remedial googling classes.. 😝

Hoping for

Linksys--->AEBS

Linksys--->Express

That will work just fine.

You can mix it up any way you want really..

In the end each unit creates a wireless network of the same name.. same security and password.

The only difference is wireless channel. Apple's documents suggest Auto is enough.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4260

I personally think it is not enough.. as auto can still select adjacent channels.. whereas doing it manually you will set units to channels 1, 6, 11 for 2.4ghz.. 5ghz is less of an issue if you want to use 5ghz in the AEBS.

And the RV082 is a very nice router.

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Answer 2

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 20, 2013 12:40 AM in response to LaPastenague

Thank you for replying! I'm googling googling classes as we type 😁 I seriously just suck at searching and its not for a lack of trying!

So with that KB article you linked (I've looked at it quite a bit the past few days) they don't really give much info on how I would go right from the RV082 to each unit. What really confused me was in this KB article,

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4145

they seem to want you to either put the AEBS in front of the router or put a network switch in after an AEBS coming off the router (which wouldn't be necessary in my case as I only have 2 additional units) but it made me think it might not be possible to do what I was hoping.

So how do I set up the three units? In the KB you sent would I set all three up in bridge mode (set connection sharing to "Off (Bridge mode)?" or would I still set one of them up to "Share a Public IP address?"

Thanks for the compliments on the RV082. I bought it for it's great aerodynamics 😁

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Answer 3

Jul 20, 2013 1:01 AM in response to AQ Bill

I bought it for it's great aerodynamics 😁

The are so art nuovo don't you think!!..

The RV082 will be the router for the network.. all the wireless units will be bridged.

would I still set one of them up to "Share a Public IP address?"

That would be very rare where you have a block of public IP.. but assuming you have a normal network with a single public IP natted by the RV082.. then everything else is going to get IP address from the Linksys.

A lot of the art work involved in the support articles are just that.. works of art.. bearing next to no reasonable connection to the real world.

And it depends on how they use each product how they picture it.. but you are using all the apple units as AP's pure and simple.. so all bridged. And all with the same create a wireless network name and setup. Let me also encourage that you keep all names.. short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric. Especially mixed with non-apple router.

Remember each unit has a different name.. AP1 AP2 AP3 for instance.. but all have the same wireless name.

Any issues you run into just ask.. but give it a go.. sometimes you can over think these things.

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Answer 4

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 20, 2013 2:24 AM in response to LaPastenague

Thank you LaPastenague... I see you are from Melbourne. I was just in Sydney last week and am supposed to be in Melbourne a few weeks from now for a quick overnight. I work for a company that hauls cargo for Qantas...

As for me overthinking things...hmmmm...never been accused of that 😁 but I get your drift. My uber limited understanding of what you're saying is that the RV082 will get whatever IP address it gets and then share that to the APs....kinda like it is already doing throughout the house. Duh. Now I think I get it.

If I may pose another question or two to you...I have an older Apple TV 2 in my theater room...It should get a pretty good signal from the Express in the electrical room. Should I have that hook up wirelessly or should I run the ATV2 right off the Linksys as well? Or I guess can I? Will it see the Network through the RV082? Actually I think I could probably run a Cat 5 from the newer Express to the ATV2 as the wiring is already in the walls....hmmmm....

Should I worry much about the 2.4 vs 5 GHZ options?

Thank you for all your help, I really appreciate it! I'll mark this thing solved as soon as I get up tomorrow and get it hooked up.

------

I don't know why it says I solved my own question...LaPastenague solved it for me. Any idea how to fix that?

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Answer 5

Jul 20, 2013 2:37 AM in response to AQ Bill

I work for a company that hauls cargo for Qantas...

Ok.. I thought Qantas hauls the cargo.. but you may mean another area.

I have an older Apple TV 2 in my theater room...It should get a pretty good signal from the Express in the electrical room. Should I have that hook up wirelessly or should I run the ATV2 right off the Linksys as well?

Media stuff is always better hard wired.. doesn't mean wireless won't work.. but wireless is a shared media.. whereas ethernet can handle multiple links. Each at full speed of the switch.. although in the case of the linksys that is only 100mbit.

The network will all be visible via the RV082.

Actually I think I could probably run a Cat 5 from the newer Express to the ATV2 as the wiring is already in the walls....hmmmm....

That should also work. The new express have WAN and LAN ports where the old models only had a single ethernet. Whenever you can run ethernet. It is much more reliable.

Should I worry much about the 2.4 vs 5 GHZ options?

5ghz give you good speed close up and personal.. but range tends to be poor.. as long as you have it.. there is nothing stopping you using it. Mostly if the house is large and you are accessing via more than immediate vicinity 2.4ghz works best.. but there is no need to worry.. just leave the 5ghz to use the same SSID as 2.4ghz and the clients will work it out.

I don't know why it says I solved my own question...LaPastenague solved it for me. Any idea how to fix that?

You solved it.. I am too old for brownie points but appreciate the thankyou!!

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Answer 6

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 20, 2013 3:02 AM in response to LaPastenague

Trying to quote the way you did but not having much luck....

Ok.. I thought Qantas hauls the cargo.. but you may mean another area.

Qantas does haul the majority of its own cargo but we do a lot of heavy lift for them. Rumor has it they are getting their own 747-400 dedicated cargo birds to take over from us. I think it is all but a done deal. No more great Sydney layovers!

Media stuff is always better hard wired.. doesn't mean wireless won't work.. but wireless is a shared media.. whereas ethernet can handle multiple links. Each at full speed of the switch.. although in the case of the linksys that is only 100mbit.

The network will all be visible via the RV082.

I built this house seven years ago and have always had a real finicky home network when it came to streaming audio for Airplay. I'm really hoping this will solve my problem once and for all. You mention that the linksys has a 100mbit speed limit. When I see myself downloading at speed of, say, 3.4Mbit what does that tell me? Would 100mbit be written as 100.0 Mbit? I know there are big differences in "m" and "M" but I've never really understood it. I would hope that 100mbit would be good enough to stream whatever I'm sending to the ATV2?

That should also work. The new express have WAN and LAN ports where the old models only had a single ethernet. Whenever you can run ethernet. It is much more reliable.

I'll try running the Cat 5 from the Express to the ATV 2. That should be easy and then I wont have to worry about the linksys at all for that portion.

5ghz give you good speed close up and personal.. but range tends to be poor.. as long as you have it.. there is nothing stopping you using it. Mostly if the house is large and you are accessing via more than immediate vicinity 2.4ghz works best.. but there is no need to worry.. just leave the 5ghz to use the same SSID as 2.4ghz and the clients will work it out.

I don't know why it says I solved my own question...LaPastenague solved it for me. Any idea how to fix that?

You solved it.. I am too old for brownie points but appreciate the thankyou!!

Thanks again for all the help. Don't be surprised if you see a ton of questions on here in about 8 hours! I'll give it my best shot. Aloha and thank you so much again......

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Answer 7

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 20, 2013 2:35 PM in response to LaPastenague

Ok....sooooooo....for the most part I think I have things working correctly with the expected BUT.

Things did not want to play together very nicely no matter what I did. The only thing I didn't do was a hard reboot of the AEBS. After multiple attempts and hard reboots of the Expresses I have the system running failrly well, at least I think.

So I am 95% of where I want to be. Three units coming off of the RV082, the AEBS and the two Expresses. Only been running free and clear for about an hour but so far so good.

The hiccup I have is the Apple TV 2 I want to hook up. If I plug the ethernet cable into the Express it crashes the whole system. All three units go down. Unplugging it fixes it. Is there a setting that I am missing somewhere that will enable "ethernet out" on the back of the Airport Express? Maybe a box I can check that says "click here to disable ethernet plug in/network destruction mode?"

Thanks in advance!

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Answer 8

Jul 20, 2013 2:51 PM in response to AQ Bill

Maybe a box I can check that says "click here to disable ethernet plug in/network destruction mode?"

I think lots of people are still hunting for that particular check box.

The hiccup I have is the Apple TV 2 I want to hook up. If I plug the ethernet cable into the Express it crashes the whole system. All three units go down. Unplugging it fixes it.

I cannot figure this one out.

Does the ATV work ok with wireless? Do you have both wireless and ethernet set on it? Did you set the IP of the ATV manually on the device?

It should of course be set for dhcp.

Sometimes we can get weird results with both wireless and ethernet active at the same time.

Sometimes it is hard to work with a device like the ATV ..

Do a factory reset of this express and do the setup again in isolation from the network. Put it back in bridge mode.. If possible plug a laptop into the express instead of the ATV so you can do some testing. You want to find out what IP the Express is picking up and what IP the computer gets.

Make sure that it is not looping back by ethernet. I cannot see how that could happen but one of the key rules here is nothing loops back on itself..

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Answer 9

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 20, 2013 3:20 PM in response to LaPastenague

Thank you for the quick reply. Just spent 40 minutes on the phone with Apple. Nice lady. Not overly helpful...kept giving me conflicting info. Said I could not use Expresses in bridge mode for a roaming network. I read her the KB article where it said that you had to put the Expresses in bridge mode. Something somewhere is crossed 😁.

I'm gonna leave everything alone for now and see how the network pans out. She says that I do not have a "roaming" network. I have an "extnded" network. The network that is extended is the Linksys apparently. What baffles me is that the AEBS has three LAN ports that are working fine but if I plug something into the Express LAN it torpedoes the system.

As for the ATV, I'll hook that up via wireless and see how it goes. Apple girl thought that maybe I was out of ip addresses (which seems unlikely) and I should configure out of bridge mode...but I thought that was something I was trying to avoid....sigh...I'm confused now!

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Answer 10

Jul 20, 2013 3:33 PM in response to AQ Bill

I think there is too much automatic settings these days.. when you need to do a complex setup.. the highly automated setup in the 6.3 utility will simply set things in the wrong mode.

Unfortunately Apple seem to have taken it for granted that latest is always greatest and the new express I think does require the 6.3 utility.. or at least a v6 utility whereas I would prefer to do most complex setups by v5.. where things tend to stay the way you set them.

Try double NAT.. it is not the greatest way.. but it is a way to fix it.

What IP is everything.

If we need to troubleshoot the setup now, we need the IP of the whole network.

So give me the info from the RV082.. it should list the dhcp allocated to everything from tables in the unit.

Once we know the IP we can setup double NAT and see if that fixes it at least partly.

You can also try a few things.. like swap the Extreme to the position where you want the ATV to plug in. Use the Express it present location of the Extreme.

Or run ethernet back to the RV082 all the way to the ATV.. so it bypasses the issue.

You might find just giving me a few screen shots of setup of each of the express and extreme is the easiest way.. it is easy to post a screen shot and it makes it easy to pick up wrong setups or issues.

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Answer 11

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 21, 2013 2:22 PM in response to LaPastenague

LaPastenague...I can't say thanks enough for all of your help. Unfortunately I'm not very up to speed on tech stuff so I'm not very helpful in even finding the information you have requested... Double NAT....is that like two small bugs attacking at once? 😁

RIght now I'm pretty happy with the way the "roaming or extended" network is performing. I have not yet hooked up the ATV2 which isn't that big of a deal at the moment....I don't foresee any real problems with that (hope I haven't spoken to soon)

In terms of IP addresses, how do I best find everything you need? I know my router lies at 192.168.0.1. From AirPort Utility I can get;

BEXPRESS1 192.168.0.110

BEXPRESS2 192.168.0.105

BEXTRME 192.168.0.112

I have had to map certain addresses to certain items in my home through my router. Don't ask me how I did that as I've long forgotten and everytime I have to add something it is like taking fifth grade over again. I have an Elk Home Automation System, a Centralite smart wiring system, and a Camera System that all required fixed addresses.

Ok, this is strange...something just changed as I was looking at it. On my MacBook Pro in Airport Utility I show the Internet coming down to the three devices...it showed like this on both my iPad and iPhone AirPort Utility until just now....

Now, as I was watching it on my iPhone it switched to this...

Only my iPhone shows this...my iPad and MBP still show as in the first picture. Not sure if any of that is relevent or not....

As for moving the Extreme downstairs so I could hook this up the way Apple wants me to, I could, but it would be a major project...and the Extreme is hard wired into three devices in the living room, a TV, a Mini, and a Stereo. It can be done but I'd need to go get a small router for those three devices....

As always I much appreciate your thoughts! Should I just go out and buy another extreme? Is there a good program that will search my network and tell me what all is on it and the associated addresses so that I might be able to help you help me?

Here are a few more screen shots of express and extremes

sorry for background in screenshots...holding 20 month old son while typing 😉

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Answer 12

Jul 21, 2013 3:44 PM in response to AQ Bill

All very clear.. and it helps no end.

You can use Command + Shift + 4 so you can select just the item you want to shoot rather than the whole screen. Although holding a 20month old and doing it may be fun.

Very interesting that they have all come up with different dns settings.

For this particular setup.. you might find it well worth while giving each unit.. a static address.

Give it an IP at the top of the range offered by the RV082.. say 192.168.0.250 and work down.. and give each one a gateway and DNS of 192.168.0.1

Do not allow each unit to have any access to DNS outside your local network. It is not necessary as they are dumb AP units. That is why things will tumble around in the airport utility pictures as the actual units might attempt to take over as master connection in the network.

On the unit that gives you trouble.. ie connected to the ATV. If the above method of removing the dns doesn't work and you still get network issues.. change it over to dhcp+nat in the network page. Do a reset first. So it will get a WAN IP as it is now.. 192.168.0.248 for example.. and the LAN side will pass out 10.0.1.x addresses which is standard IP for the express and see how it goes. Double NAT can cause issues and you will get an error message but it can also fix things if something goes belly up.

(Double NAT means that you have two routers plugged into each other. RV082 is a NAT router.. so all the rest we are putting into bridge to avoid that.).

As for moving the Extreme downstairs so I could hook this up the way Apple wants me to, I could, but it would be a major project...and the Extreme is hard wired into three devices in the living room, a TV, a Mini, and a Stereo. It can be done but I'd need to go get a small router for those three devices....

I thought it might just be easier to work with the Extreme.. but if the swap over is not possible just work with the express for now.. it should be possible to get it working.

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Answer 13

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 21, 2013 4:35 PM in response to LaPastenague

Ok...going to try giving static ip addresses. To prove just how bad my skills are, do I do that in the express/extremes or do I do that on the linksys? Lemme guess, probably both ;0) I'll play around and see if I can get it to work on my own here. It appears that the Linksys was handing out 192.168.0.100-192.168.0.149. Looks like I can change that so I'll make it up to .250 and start there.

AirPort Utility is now giving me this picture on the MBP. On the iPhone it is back to the normal three across look. Hopefully this clears up after these changes I'm gonna try and make. I noticed that the whole network just bogged down as well.

So the reason I wanted to switch my home network to a "roaming" network is all for AirTunes. If I walked out from the living room to the deck and had my iPhone running the home stereo I would often lose connectivity to Airtunes even though I had a good wifi signal from the Express upstairs. I figured it was the handoff from the Express downstairs to the one upstairs is what would cause me to lose the music. I was hoping a "roaming" network would fix this. The way I have it set up now has not solved the problem, so I'm hoping these fixes you have recommended will do that.

Is the Airport Extreme considered a NAT router? The Expresses? I sure wish I could find some sort of a port mapper that I understood how to use that could visualize my network for me!

I can move the Extreme downstairs no problem...I just need to come up with a small router/hub to connect the Mac Mini, TV, and Stereo in the living room to. Would that be the best way to do this you think?

Looks like my Melbourne trip cancelled....if it comes back the beer is on me for all of this help! I can't say thank you enough!

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Answer 14

AQ Bill Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 21, 2013 5:06 PM in response to LaPastenague

Ok, I think I have managed to make the changes you recommended. Looks like I was confused about the static range versus dynamic. I left the dynamic 100-149 and set three statics 248-250. Here are the setting in the Linksys if they help...

I set the Expresses and Extreme like the following picture...this is the Extreme....

So are you in network design or are you just naturally genius ;0)

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Answer 15

Jul 21, 2013 5:22 PM in response to AQ Bill

To prove just how bad my skills are, do I do that in the express/extremes or do I do that on the linksys? Lemme guess, probably both ;0)

Do it on either.. not both.. but it is probably easier to do it on the extreme/express.

My personal preference would be to do everything in the main router.. so it fully controls the network.. but I do think it is too hard unless you are really familar with doing this kind of setup.

If I walked out from the living room to the deck and had my iPhone running the home stereo I would often lose connectivity to Airtunes even though I had a good wifi signal from the Express upstairs.

I know zero about airtunes.. sorry.. absolutely nothing. I am a rather late comer to the Mac scene.. and I guess I am half deaf now anyway.

Is the Airport Extreme considered a NAT router? The Expresses? I sure wish I could find some sort of a port mapper that I understood how to use that could visualize my network for me!

They are all NAT routers if you set up with NAT.. but of course you are not using them as such.. in bridge you bypass the NAT side.

I don't know of a port mapper and I should not really have thought it important.

Although the airport utility is supposed to show what is happening it is a bit less than detailed. Are you running ipv6 local-link.. that is important.

I can move the Extreme downstairs no problem...I just need to come up with a small router/hub to connect the Mac Mini, TV, and Stereo in the living room to. Would that be the best way to do this you think?

It is nice to have another router.. but you can use an Express with a switch.. although I think you can pickup extreme cheap enough now if you hunt second hand.

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