Mac network problem solved!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m feelin’ pretty studly just now. :wink:

We had installed an AirPort Express as a range extender in our home wireless network, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything. The computers could see it just fine, but the signal strength way out in the sitting room was the same old sucky 2 bars it had been before we installed the Express.

What the heck? The Express is right friggin’ there! Why aren’t you getting a nice strong signal?

So off to the internet: Google, select the top six responses, read, repeat.

And I found it! In AirPort utility, if you select the Express and dig a bit deep, there’s a pulldown menu that gives you choices: Join a WPA network / Join a wireless network / Extend a wireless network.

Who knew there was a difference between “joining” and “extending”? I selected “extend” and everything is hunky-dory. Turns out “joining” is used if you just want to use the Express to run a printer or something.

4 bars now, and Mrs. R’s Hulu isn’t stuttering any more. Hooray! :smiley:

2

Ah, good to know. We had all kinds of network problems with our Airport Express; we finally upgraded to the next step up (what the hell is it called? The more expensive one.) That seems to have solved most of our network problems (it still drops out regularly, but comes back in seconds); we might use our Express to extend the range of the bigger one.

3

When you’re using an Express (or whatever) as an extender, there seem to be two things:

  1. For the Base Station , the “Allow this network to be extended” box (in AirPort utility, on the Network tab) needs to be checked; and

  2. For the extender, that pulldown I described above (on the Network tab, too) has to be set to “extend this network”.