Q: I have a new modem and want to set up my Apple Airport as a backup drive; how do I do that?

I disconnected the power to TC, plugged it back in, and "voila" it was up in Airport Utility,

I am entering the fray a bit late in the piece.. other side of the world don't you know.. but let me also comment that using the TC in bridge, wireless off, does seem to result in the computer often losing connection to it.

The reference got lost and I will need to search around again.. but Apple did come to realise that the TC dropping off the network was a problem that did required the computer to connect directly to the TC, either by wireless or ethernet, and for the TC if at all possible to operate as the main router. Hence they were advising people to use double NAT.

This has not affected Tesserax setup with a Cisco router but it has affected mine, with the ISP router of rather lower quality. And it has affected yours Movie Princess.. so as a warning.. if you find the TC drops off the network again, and requires restarting often on a daily basis.. the best solution is to plug the computer directly to the TC (or use its wireless). So no biggie at this point.. but if you end up finding TM gives you a daily message that it cannot find the TC you and you need to daily reboot it.. then post back and we can suggest better setup.

LaPastenague, thanks for the additional information. FWIW, I assigned static private IP addresses to each of my AirPort base stations, including the TCs. To date, (fingers-crossed) I never had to restart a TC to "find" it in the AirPort Utility. This, amazingly, is true for both wired and wireless clients ... both Macs & PCs ... although virtual machine PCs tend to be a bit more finicky.

Thanks, LaPastenague for the information.  I think we have "lost" the TC a few times already just trying to get it set up, and get the TC disk erased in preparation for an attempt to get Time Machine set up and working.

A Static IP for the TC might be helpful.

We haven't heard back yet on whether the first Time Machine backup was completed successfully over the Verizon wireless to a Time Capsule in Bridge Mode (with wireless turned off on the TC)......and whether subsequent incremental backups are working......so the next few days will put things to the test.

Hopefully, this setup will work reliably......so Apple Support won't need to be involved with another type of setup. I can understand Apple wanting to use an Apple connection.....wireless or wired......for backups from the Mac to the TC......but still have a tough time understanding Apple's recommendation that the TC should be set up as a router......not a bridge......which seems to go against some basic rules that we've all been taught....and also what AirPort Utility will point out as an error.

Tesserax wrote:

 

LaPastenague, thanks for the additional information. FWIW, I assigned static private IP addresses to each of my AirPort base stations, including the TCs. To date, (fingers-crossed) I never had to restart a TC to "find" it in the AirPort Utility. This, amazingly, is true for both wired and wireless clients ... both Macs & PCs ... although virtual machine PCs tend to be a bit more finicky.

I have included that in the base instructions for a while.. but for most users with a bridged TC that means setting up the main router to do DHCP reservation or using a static IP on the WAN of the TC which is getting out of depth for most people.

I wonder if this is due to bonjour sleep proxy issues have not gone away..

Cisco did a lot more work with apple on fixing the bonjour network stuff.. for a lot of router manufacturers bonjour is hello in French.. !!