1st generation airport express with 6th generation airport extreme

If you have adequate wireless coverage now, the "join" setting would be recommended for the best network performance. The reason for this is that when the AirPort "extends" a network using wireless, this will result in a loss of about half of the potential speed on the entire network.

This loss does not occur when the AirPort is set to "join" a network.

If you need more wireless coverage in the area where the older Express will be located, then it can be set to "extend" the network. You will have a "bigger" network this way.....but the downside is that it will be slower network this way. Whether or not you would notice this difference is an open question, since I doubt that your Internet connection speed would exceed the speed of your network.

In addition to Bob's comments, by "1st generation" Express, are you referring to the 802.11g (A1084) or 802.11n (A1264) model?

Tesserax made a nice catch here. I was simply assuming that your "1st Generation AirPort Express" was a model A1264.

Things can get confusing because Apple did offer an earlier version of the AirPort Express......the A1084 and A1088....before the 1st Generation AirPort Express was introduced in 2008.

If you have the older version of the Express, then that will change the answer quite a bit.

Thanks for the info. The A1264 can be setup to "extend a wireless network" if that is what you want to try. In fact, Apple's setup software will set it up that way automatically, since Apple assumes that users want to "extend" their network.

Once the AirPort Express is set up to "extend", you can use AirPort Utility to change the setting to "join a wireless network" if you want to go that route.

Hello everyone

I want to use mine to stream iTunes

I am having this difficulty as well. I have an A1264 airport express.

However my Timecapsule/airport extreme (version 7.73) will not acknowledge the express and says its not supported.

Does anyone know why?

very upsetting to have $300 in hardware and it is now useless.