Weird Set Up Over College Network?

Upon arriving at school last semester I had high hopes of setting up wireless communication between my laptop, apple tv, and airport express. My express is hooked up to my DAC, which then outputs to a tube buffer, which then outputs to the receiver. I tried and tried but could never get the **** thing to work given that the wifi network at my school does not allow routers.

I tried registering the airport express' mac address a hundred times with the school network and nothing. Last night I revisited the issue and managed to solve the problem. All I did differently was give the network the wired MAC address as opposed to the wireless one. This created a separate wifi network stemming from my airport express. Upon logging onto the new wifi network, I realized I had no access to the internet but could finally achieve device to device communication. I was able to sync my apple tv wirelessly and of course utilize AirTunes. When you try and browse the internet you can't but all the AirTunes stuff works.I am just curious as to what exactly is going on?

Is the network basically not allowing the router to provide internet access? It's not really a problem, I just switch over to my standard wifi network when I want to use the network, but it's strange having a wifi network which will allow airplay and device to device communication (syncing) but not internet. IF anyone could explain to me what's happening technically I would be much obliged.

When you go into Airport Utility is the airport getting an IP address etc from your schools network? By some chance do they have wired connections you can use as well?

Sounds to me like you are seeing your computer/ATV setting up it's own private network between it and the devices. Since it is a private network, it won't have any access to the web since the school probably has the appropriate ports blocked at their server level. There's not really a way around this and the school does it to keep individual badnwidth use down.

Unless he hooks in through the Ethernet Port on the Airport and uses the Airport in Share a single IP mode and as long as the Airport is handing out addresses on a different network and also performing NAT I don't see why it wouldn't work.

That may work depending on what the network at the school will allow.