This is a little bit outside my normal bailiwick, but, I do some work at a local private school directing the educational technology program. One of my goals was to look at their wireless network and see how to make it better. Without going into too much detail, we can say it was spread over 2 buildings (even though they are wired together) with 5 different access points broadcasting 6 different wireless networks and old hardware that had to be restarted daily. I spoke with a local networking consultant about creating a single roaming network and he said it couldn’t be done without spending a LOT of money and creating a system that you might see in a hospital or large office building. Well, needless to say, I didn’t like that answer so I started doing some research about Airport networks and found a lot of information about it.
The goal was to have one, single wireless network and using Apple’s Airports were by far the easiest and simplest way to do this. Essentially, I created a roaming wireless network built off the wired backbone. So, I used one Airport extreme at the router and immediately after the internet filter. Quickly configured it for security and access via the airport utility on my iPad. Then, I took 4 Airport expresses and 1 Extremes and plugged them in one by one to configure them.
This is where the “easy” part comes in. Each time I plugged one in, my iPad recognized it and asked me if I wanted to extend the main network. I click “yes” and wait about 30-40 seconds for it to restart and BAM! it’s done. Then, I move them to different parts of the 2 buildings and within about an hour, I have a solid, roaming wireless network between the 2 buildings. The best part is, there’s virtually no loss of speed anywhere and in fact, the signal is much stronger and easily reaches the corners of the property when it didn’t before.
Well, that’s not actually the best part, the really best part is that I can now manage every device from anywhere with my iPad or iPhone. It looks like this:
I know that the Airports aren’t cheap, but they are amazingly easy to set up.
How did you physically connect the 4 expresses and one extreme to the main Extreme base station give theat there are only 3 Ethernet ports on the extreme?
Hi Loopel, In this case, we have a large ethernet network that is fed by the main AP Extreme. Then, throughout the building, we add the AP Expresses in different rooms to redistribute the wireless network. So, they’re not all plugged into the Extreme directly, but on the network which is controlled by the Extreme. Does that make sense? THanks!
Mark
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the speedy reply!
Yes, it does indeed make sense. So the main AirPort Extreme feeds into a patche panel or switch I presume?
I am about to set up something similar and was interested as I will be using up all of the Ethernet ports on the back of the Extreme and noticed that you had five being fed from one Extreme.
Thanks for your time.
Yes, the internet comes into the building. Then it goes into the DSL router. From there, it goes directly into the Airport Extreme, which you set up first. Then, one line out goes into the main switch so all ethernet ports in the building essentially go through the Extreme. Then, I set up Expresses around the building and as I plug them in, they ask do you want to extend the current wireless network “NAME?” and I say yes, then it restarts and it’s done! It’s very easy and I was quite impressed. You can also use Extremes to extend a wireless network. But, you need to make sure to extend that wireless network, not set up a new one. And you have to have ethernet running from your ports to the new expresses to get that network name and rebroadcast from ethernet. If you don’t plug them in, then the system will want to receive the wireless signal and rebroadcast it that way, but that doesn’t work very well at all.
Hi Mark,
Not to be an insufferable pedant, but if I understand your post correctly (AEs not connected by wire to Extreme) then it is actually a “wirelessly extended” network as opposed to a “roaming” network – at least in Apple jargon. It seems like semantics, but if one of your readers researches this further I don’t want them to be confused when they read the Apple docs.
Thanks in advance.
Hi Misterwheat, technically it is a wired roaming network, according to Apple. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4260 . But, I understand that it’s not always clear.
Thanks!
Mark