This is not a question but a report.
I've been extending my Airport Extreme Base Unit via WiFi with an older Airport Extreme via Ethernet Cable and an Airport Express via WiFi.
The Express is also acting as an iTunes AirPlay Receiver which I use as an input to an old 1978 Pioneer Amp with rebuilt early 1980s speakers. It sounds pretty cool with ALAC audio. But I've been having some minor dropout problems with the audio.
The other night I tried improving the performance of the entire WiFi system and hopefully cure my audio dropout issues by connecting the Base Unit Airport Extreme & the Airport Express with a CAT6 Ethernet cable.
CHAOS ENSUED.
It literally scrambled the brains of the Airport Extreme Base Station with a variety of changing status malfunctions appearing on the AirPort Utility Screen. "No Internet" (even though internet was fine) Loss of communication between the Base Station and Extenders. Disappearing Base Station and Extenders. Weird stuff.
The short answer: I needed to hard reset the Airport Extreme Base Station and choose restore original settings, with nothing else attached to it, just to get it's brains straightened out. Then hard reset the Airport Express before hooking it up to the Base Station. Then, after attaching to the base station with CAT6 ethernet, I used the Airport Utility to set it up to extend the Airport Extreme Base Station. Then everything was finally okay.
Before realizing I needed to hard reset the AirPort Express, I'd tried hooking it up to the Base Station via CAT6 ethernet cable several times. Each time, the Base Station would loose it's marbles and go buggy all over again.
I've read in another post just before sharing this info that it seems that my cable hookup introduced some kind of feedback loop, because the AirPort Express had already been configured to work with WiFi.
I also discovered another faux pas in my original setup while trouble shooting the above.
Although the older AirPort Extreme being repurposed as an extender, appeared in the AirPort Utility as being directly wired to the Airport Extreme Base Station... In my haste, while originally setting up the new Base Station - I'd left the old extreme plugged into my internet provider Verizon Router, not directly to the Airport Extreme Base Station. They were communicating seemingly alright, but it should be plugged directly to the WiFi Airport Extreme Base Station. I think this was causing some other WiFi performance issues. Slow connection times and range issues. It is now ( Along with the AirPort Express mentioned above ) directly wired to the WiFi Airport Extreme Base Station. So far things seem much improved.
