06/29/2010
The Problem:
I want to have one wireless zone throughout my house, but I want it to be fast
The Big Win:
I want to have music in many rooms of my house. That's easy if you have stereo system, but I got rid of mine back when I had a small apartment and no room for it (and yeah, I'm too cheap to buy a new one with a bunch of speakers, and WAY too cheap for something like a Sonus system).
The Solution:
I already had an Apple Time Capsule (which is my router, and makes backing up my machines simple as pie, and restoring from a hard drive failure on my machine a simple 1-hour process), and I went out and bought 3 refurbished airport express units from Apple. They cost me about $80 each.
The two that are closest to the Time Capsule I set up to be wireless BRIDGES. The one on the 3rd floor I ran an ethernet cable to and then spent about 3 hours trying to figure out how to make it work on the same network. I started out with 2 networks, one called "attic" and one called "home," but I found that my computers kept jumping networks. Besides, I couldn't share music right if I had two networks (see below).
What I found as the solution is dead simple:
- All non-wired Airport Extremes MUST be within range of a wired base-station. They can't cascade without using WNS, which REALLY (REALLY REALLY) slows things down. Just set them as a "bridge" and you're good to go.
- To make a WIRED base station "join" the existing network, you don't "join" or "bridge." Instead, you simply create a new network on the same channel, with the same network name and password. It just works. Your devices will just find whichever is stronger, like magic.
Some other things worth knowing:
- There are only 3 channels (1, 6, and 11). The rest overlap. Use iSumbler to find the clearest channel.
- Don't use WNS, since it REALLY slows things down (did I mention that yet?). Start with 56 for transmit rate, and cut it in half for each unit after the first.
WNS vs. non WNS
The wrong way (WNS)
WNS cuts the speed of your connection for EVERYONE in half (not just the people who are farther away).
The right way (run a cable to things far away)
This will be fast and you'll be happy. In my installation I actually have a couple of Airport Extreme's (for music) scattered around (so my number 2 is actually 2a and 2b).
The big win with music throughout the house
I paired each Airport Express up with some fairly nice old Bose computer speakers I found around the office (not perfect, but easily expandable if I want to buy more Bose speakers down the road).
Because my home machine is a portable and I want my music to be on even if my machine isn't plugged in, I grabbed an old Mac Mini from the office and turned that into my "media server" by copying my iTunes library to it.
I can control the library from our iPhones or by screen-sharing with the "Media Player."
I hope this is helpful to someone and saves the 3 hours of fooling around that it cost me. Drop me a line if you find any errors, or if this helped you!
~ Jason
Gravity Switch Co-Founder
(who is currently PSYCHED to be doing cool stuff with iPad and eBooks!)