First: I am SO not a techie. I will do my utmost to describe my problem and clarify things, but please to bear with me. I MIGHT have too much information in this, or not enough, but I’m hoping someone can help.
I have an Airport Express I got to send my iTunes music to my stereo in the studio. My computer is a PC running Windows XP, and everything there has been updated recently. The whole house is on a wireless router that originates (? I think that’s the right term) from my husband’s Mac downstairs, and serves my computer, his, and our daughter’s PC. We have a cable modem and we have TV, phone and internet from the same company.
We got the Airport Express hooked up and it works fine… as long as my computer is not online at the same time. (We had a problem with the phone disconnecting me from the internet, but traced that back to one particular phone that was on the wrong frequency.) I keep Yahoo Messenger running most of the time on my computer - I work at home and I like that I can get audible mail notifications and take breaks to chat with friends. So, this isn’t working for me. I can have music in my studio OR internet, but not both. I do have two “available network connections” - one is my router, one is the Airport - to send my music I have to be on the Airport, to use the internet I have to be on the router.
Is it possible to hook both the iTunes AND the internet up at the same time, using the same network?
Do I understand this correctly: your husband’s Mac is wired to the cable modem, and shares its internet connection wirelessly with both your PC and your daughter’s? And the Airport Express is hooked up only to the stereo?
What you can do instead, if your various cables reach and you have no signal strength problems, is have the Airport Express be hooked up to both the stereo and and the cable modem simultaneously. (This is the set-up I have at home, since stereo and cable modem reside in the same entertainment center.) Your husband’s Mac then doesn’t have to share its connection, because you’ll all be using the Airport Express as your wireless router. You should only see one wireless network on your PC then, and have uninterrupted access to both StereoTunes and the internet.
This is what we thought too - just not sure exactly how to set this up. Would we remove our wireless router from the chain, and replace it with the Airport, or connect the Airport TO the wireless router, between it and the computer?
Or…wait. I think I understood this wrong. I would connect MY computer (which has the iTunes on it) to the network via the modem in my computer, and not use my husband’s Mac’s wireless connection at all? If I have that right now, his wireless router would be unnecessary and my PC would be the “hub”?
Actually, your Airport Express (AE) IS a wireless router. If you have another router currently connected to the cable modem, you can replace it altogether with the AE (again, assuming that you have the reach to connect the AE to your stereo at the same time). The AE is then THE hub for your network.
If you do that, then
your PC
daughter’s PC
husband’s Mac
can all be set up so as to wirelessly connect directly to the AE. None of the individual machines needs to share its connection with any of the others, although you can still set up your local network so that each machine can see the others, if needed (e.g., sharing a printer).
This arrangement is contingent upon the AE signal strength being good enough to reach to wherever your individual computers normally reside. If, say, your AE is downstairs in the living room, and daughter’s PC upstairs can barely receive a signal, then you might be able to use your old wireless router as a repeater (which means it can be set up to relay the AE signal a greater distance). The how-to’s of that are going to depend on your equipment and might be a pain to set up, so I would try to run everyone directly off the AE first.