What is the best approach? - Airport Express vs. Extreme

Question

Level 1

10 points

What is the best approach? - Airport Express vs. Extreme

Hello everyone,

I am just about to install at my house an Airport Extreme (the newest version) and an Airport Express.

I would like to use both at the same time, expanding the wifi network using one of the Airports.

My question is simple: what should be the best option, to plug on the DSL modem? In other words, which should be the primary Airport and the secondary Airport?

At this point, my idea is to use the Express connected to the DSL modem and let the Extreme as the extender of the wifi - because of its better antennas and beamforming tech.

Regards,

Ricardo

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.3), Iphone, Ipad, AirPort..

Posted on Jul 7, 2015 9:45 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Tesserax

Level 10

148,447 points

Jul 7, 2015 10:26 AM in response to rslora

Given your networking hardware options, it would be best to connect the AirPort Extreme directly to the DSL modem, and then, use the AirPort Express to extend its wireless range.

Reply

Answer 2

Jul 7, 2015 10:28 AM in response to rslora

which should be the primary Airport and the secondary Airport?

The AirPort Extreme should be the primary router, since it has much faster wireless and wired capabilities and much better wireless antennas, compared to the AriPort Express.

If you make the AirPort Express the "main" router, then most of the performance capabilities of the AirPort Extreme will be wasted, since the Express will really knock down and slow the connection speeds that it receives from the AirPort Extreme.

If you are looking for the best performance, you really need to have two AirPort Extremes, and they need to be connected by Ethernet, not wireless.

Reply