![]() Set up an Airport Express in kitchen & family room to extend the basements dual band 2.4/5 Ghz TimeCapsuleĬonnect ethernet output of the family room Express to my Perfectwave DAC with ethernet input. Plug Smart TV and ATV and Xbox into the back of each of those Extremes. Set those Extremes to bridge mode as access point only, with a unique SSID 5Ghz only. Plug in second Airport Extreme to ethernet jack on main floor, and another Extreme to ethernet jack on top floor. Plug ethernet cables from my two NAS and one 8 port switch into the TimeCapsule.Įthernet cables leave switch to go to all parts of the house (pre-wired). Plug into cable modem in basement (Xfinity wifi off). Set up 3 GB TimeCapsule Airport Extreme in basement, dual band 2.4/5 Ghz for compatibility + guest access. My eyeballs turned into little swirly spirals by the time I got to the 1st chart. I've mentioned this before but now that I have an all-Extreme WiFi network, I thought I'd post an AirPort Utility screen grab. I'm hoping things remain stable this go round, but find myself scoping out Orbi and Ubiquity every time this happens. At the end of the day, I don't think they were improving throughput the way I expected 2, I set all the Expresses to Join only, as I don't need them to extend anything. They were adding an extra level of complexity that made troubleshooting a PITA. I did do things a little different this time: 1, removed the Powerline adapters between all but the most distant Extreme. Just today, I had to put every device back to factory settings and build the system back out. Unfortunately, it seems to require a periodic restarting of hardware. ![]() ![]() The Bedroom Extreme is on the other end of the house, connected via Powerline adapter. All together, for three Airplay2 connections and 4 access points, I think I'm ~$425 (I paid full MSRP for the first Extreme). I also hit eBay to build this out - didn't pay more than $50 for an Extreme or $25 for an Express. Overall it's uber stable, fast, and not too expensive (if you are lucky enough to have existing hardware and/or you can find good deals on used equipment). (Apple devices don't do this non-Apple access points unless it's a true mesh.) My non-Apple devices don't roam properly, but almost all of them are stationary devices so it doesn't matter. Overall, this AirPort setup works as a sort of mesh system because Apple devices will seamlessly roam from AirPort to AirPort as long as they have the same SSID. All the other AirPorts are used as simple WiFi bridges, on a wired Gigabit backbone using a 24-port Zonet unmanaged switch as the main switch. Using the cable modem as the router was a less stable setup, plus it sometimes seemed to have odd incompatibilities with AirPorts. I put my Rogers Hitron CODA-4582U cable modem in bridge mode, with one AirPort (Basement) as the router. I can get by with two 802.11ac units, but having three AirPorts is much better, and four means strong signal almost everywhere. ![]() One AirPort Extreme is definitely not good enough for this big L-shaped house. My last 802.11ac AirPort Extreme cost me all of US$55 on eBay, shipped. since the cheaper mesh systems out there don't really turn my crank, and the higher end ones are expensive. I've gotten some used/refurb'd ones relatively inexpensively so it does make sense, esp. My final AirPort Express died, leaving a small gap in my network, but instead switching to a true third party mesh network I decided to add one more AirPort Extreme to my setup to hold me over for a while longer.
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