Thinking of going full Airport with my home network

[M_Six]

Hi Folks,

I currently use two Ubiquiti APs for my wifi. One is hard wired to my router in my basement office, the other is upstairs in the living room hanging on the wall. My wife's PC is wired to it. The two APs are connected wirelessly to each other. It works fairly well and has been consistent enough for normal surfing, but there are weak spots for heavy use like using my Roku on the wifi. Baseball games and movies tend to buffer a lot.

I'm thinking about going full Mac. Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, and Apple TV. My question is, can I hook a Time Capsule to my router downstairs and then use the Airport Extreme upstairs to connect my wife's PC to it (sort of like a bridge) and use it to extend the wifi network?

 

[KevinJS]

Yes, you can. Set it up using Airport Utility to extend your network (as opposed to creating a new network).

 

[M_Six]

Yes, you can. Set it up using Airport Utility to extend your network (as opposed to creating a new network).

Thanks. I figured as much. Just wanted to double-check. I like the dual band capabilities because our microwave oven really stomps on our wifi in the 2.4Ghz range.

 

[KevinJS]

It's worth pointing out that a network extender needs a strong signal itself. It cannot boost what it cannot see, so if your wife's PC is wireless the best place for the Express is in a part of the house where it can receive a good signal from the Time Capsule, and where it can relay that signal to the PC.

Time Capsules and Airport Extremes can have network printers and hard drives plugged into them, Airport Express can have printers and speakers plugged into them, so you can play your iTunes content via Airplay to speakers plugged in to the Express, while using an HDD plugged in to the TC/Extreme as a file server.

I also read that a cheap way of emulating a Time Capsule is to simply plug an HDD into an Extreme and use Time Machine as though it's a Time Capsule. Haven't tried that myself though.

 

[M_Six]

I just ordered both, so we'll see. My wife's PC is not wifi enabled (although we do have a USB wifi adapter just in case). I think this should work fine as the Ubiquiti setup has been working well. It's more the stability I'm looking for and the dual band coverage. I'll have both devices by Friday, so we'll see how well they work together. I brought home an iMac today and I'm on a 13" MBP, plus we both have iPhones, so we're slowly morphing into full Mac-o-philes.

 

[KevinJS]

That's pretty well what happened to me. Never had an Apple device, then bought an iPhone 4. Now I have MBP, iPad, looking for my 3rd iPhone, AppleTV and 4 Apple routers feeding AirPlay to non-Apple devices.

Trying to justify a Mac Mini too. I'd go iMac but I don't have room for a screen. I'll just plug the Mini into the TV when I actually need to use it.

 

[M_Six]

I have a Mac Mini as well. It's running Windows 7 in bootcamp. Once I set up the iMac, I'll keep the Mac Mini as a headless unit and just use Remote Desktop to access it. There are still a few Windows only programs I need from time to time.

 

[M_Six]

Does it matter which device is where? With an Airport Extreme and a Time Capsule, can the Extreme be wired to my router and the Time Capsule be the "extender" as it were? With the Time Capsule upstairs where our wifi devices are located, would that make backing up faster due to the closer proximity and hence stronger signal?

 

[KevinJS]

I'm not sure, but it sounds plausible. I don't think the Express can create the dual band network (although I may be wrong on that). I'd definitely connect the Extreme to the modem and have the TC as an extender. I don't think the HDD cares where it is, TBH, so long as it is receiving a signal.

 

[M_Six]

So far, it looks like a big improvement in speed and stability. My laptop is connected to the Time Capsule extender at 450Mb/s in the 5ghz range. Running an internet speed test through testmy.net shows a big jump in download and upload speed. My Roku box is also up on the new network and there was almost no buffering while watching a baseball game on MLB.TV last night. Maybe 1 or 2 times as opposed to 8-10 I normally had to deal with using the older system.

My first backup to the time capsule, which I did over wired Ethernet by connecting my laptop directly to the TC, was very slow at first. But then I found a command to run which killed the file transfer throttling and the speed picked up significantly. I'm still troubleshooting the backup of my wife's PC, which is now wired directly to the TC. It's been running for over 12 hours and has only backed up 185MB. I changed which files it's backing up so it's not trying to grab a lot of hidden files or logs or whatever. We'll see if that helps.

My next move will be to buy an Apple TV 4 and see how well that does with MLB.TV. Now if I can just convince my wife to abandon Windows and move to OSx...

 

[Slydude]

If either of you gents would like to get rid of some of that Apple "junk" I could be persuaded to take it off your hands for "recycling" ;Dpurposes. I'm all about protecting the environment you know.

In all seriousness and for the benefit of others reading the thread here's a tip. Attaching printers to the USB port on the Time Capsule seems to work well. It is not a bad way to add basic wireless printing to an older printer. Even if the printer has wireless capability the setup is sometimes easier by simply connecting the printer to the Time Capsule. The one caveat I have found is that some functions may not be fully supported that way: Some printers will not report remaining ink levels correctly among other things.

 

[KevinJS]

I have a cheap and nasty HP printer attached to the USB of my Extreme, so agree with that.

I'm also in the recycling game. My last Express came from Kijiji for $30. No idea why the guy sold it so cheap but it works perfectly and looks like it was never used. Win.

I use the optical output of the Express to add AirPlay to music amplifiers that don't have it. I think I showed this link before but just in case:

http://www.ipadforums.net/threads/adding-airplay-to-a-home-theatre-receiver-amplifier.129658/

 

[Slydude]

I recently discovered that the 3.5mm outlet on an Airport Express doubles as a digital output, same as the one on the MacBook.

So plugging a mini Toslink optical cable into it will send a digital signal to an outboard DAC or amplifier/receiver.

Original post
This part of that thread caught my attention. Not sure if I didn't know this or had forgotten it but it's interesting either way.

 

[KevinJS]

Yes. One reason I don't believe Apple will get rid of the headphone socket on Macs. There's more to it than meets the eye.

 

[M_Six]

I removed the old wifi equipment today. The Airport system is running flawlessly. It seems to self-improve, if that's possible. My Macs are connected on the 5Ghz network at very nice speeds and backups are working perfectly on all machines. Next move is to try connecting our old but trusty HP Laserjet 1200 to the TC to see if we can share it out.

 

[Slydude]

Since our router is dual band I connected it to the 2.4 GHZ portion of the network. Printers generally do fine there unless there are other devices causing interference. I did that mainly because I could not find an answer to one question: If you put older devices on the 5 GHz band does it slow that portion of the network down all the time or just when the older device is being used.

 

[KevinJS]

Good to hear it's all working.