Airport Express Curiousity

[grymes]

To start off, I just recently bought a MacBook Pro and have been diving into the world of Mac and all its goodness. I also have a fairly decent stereo with a pair of Bowers & Wilkins speakers that are begging for more music. The solution perhaps is to get the Airport Express with AirTunes from Apple. My major concern before buying is that it won't work given my current network connection. This would be going in my apartment where I have wireless internet provided to by the apartment building. I am trying to understand if I would need a router for any reason to make this work. The way I have been understanding it is that it acts as a router and you can even use this as a stand alone unit if I did have an internet connection coming out of the wall. Let's say I was stuck in the stone ages and had no internet, would I still be able to use the AirPort Express to send music to my stereo via my laptop? And if I did want to play music to the stereo and still be using my apartment building's wireless network, is that doable without having direct access to the buildings router? It isn't WEP encrypted. I hope this makes sense and thanks for your help.

Thanks Mac-Forums.

-Brian

 

[grymes]

No advice to offer a lowly newbie?

 

[baggss]

The issue here is getting the APEx on your apartments wireless network. It may work, it may not. You can set the APEx up as an independent network for streaming music, but then you would have to switch off your main network to use it. If you can get it on the apartments network then it would be likely that anyone on the network could stream music to it if they knew how. That just doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

This is unique problem. Maybe it's time to get your own internet access and set up your own wireless network.

 

[Stretch]

You can put a password on the speakers, so only people with the password can use them. That would keep other people in the building from using your speakers, but like baggss said, not sure if you'll be able to get your APEx to work with your buildings wireless.

 

[grymes]

I figured this might be the problem. For now, I think I have decided that I will borrow my friends APEx and get feel for how it will interact with my network situation and computer. Buying my own internet would be ideal but I'm just not prepared to spend for more internet will I am in a sense paying for it already. It seems like if I can get it on the network and set a password on the speakers I could be all set. What is needed to get it on the network? This network isnt protected, but I cant get into the routers setup menus either.

 

[baggss]

Just run the Airport Admin Utility and tell the APEx to join the existing network. It will depend on how they have the wireless LAN setup as to wether it will be able to join or not.

 

[grymes]

Thank you guys for all the help. I bought a APEx off eBay, it came in the mail today with all the fixings. Once I figured out I needed to reset the product, I found out how, restart the APEx and rant the Airport Utility. Success, complete success. I'm now playing beautiful music on my home stereo.