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Tyler McAdams · Dec 4, 2005, 11:02 PM

I have 2 routers... one Airport that was an airport express on it and a regular router. I'm trying to get my computer on the regualr router to see the airport express that's connected to the airport router which is hooked up behind my regular router. This is for both a printer that's hooked up to the airport express and for itumes sharing that's hooked up to my home entertainment system.

Krusty · Dec 5, 2005, 06:05 PM

I can't exactly from your post how you have it set up but, as far as I know, you'll have to have the airport base station connected to your landline router for this to work and the DHCP serving function of the Airport turned off. If you have not done this, you effectively have 2 completely separate subnets running (one from the landline router and a separate wireless network controlled by the airport base station ... which could explain why iTunes music sharing does not work). In my setup (a landline Netgear with a wireless Netgear attached), I had to turn off the DHCP serving functions of the wireless router and let the landline router control the whole show.

ghporter · Dec 5, 2005, 06:36 PM

If you post a detailed description, or a diagram, of how you have everything connected, it will be much easier for us to figure out how things are, and how they need to be to get you what you want.

Tyler McAdams · Dec 6, 2005, 07:40 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

If you post a detailed description, or a diagram, of how you have everything connected, it will be much easier for us to figure out how things are, and how they need to be to get you what you want.

tooki · Dec 6, 2005, 08:45 PM

If you used the default settings, you're doing NAT (gateway mode) on the Airport. Instead, switch it to bridge (access point) mode.

Also, the "RJ45 router" -- do you mean a switch or hub, or do you actually mean another router? (If it is another router, that's triple NAT, a horrible thing!)

tooki

Tyler McAdams · Dec 6, 2005, 08:52 PM

Yeah it's another router. It's only there in case we need another port or two for the random laptop. Thanks for the help!

ghporter · Dec 6, 2005, 09:18 PM

BASIC NETWORK RULE HERE: If you're using a router just for its switch, only use the switch ports and all is well. If you go through the router's WAN port at all, you MUST configure the thing to act as a pass-through switch if that is supported by your router. In other words, just using the LAN ports on a wired router is the simplest and easiest way to use just the switch.

Fortunately, AirPort base stations DO offer a bridge mode, which means they JUST convert wired traffic to wireless and vice versa.

Tyler, make the setting change tooki suggests and let us know if that fixes things.

Tyler McAdams · Dec 7, 2005, 09:56 AM

Were is the brigde mode setting? I can not find it... (I've got the old airport model btw.)

ghporter · Dec 7, 2005, 02:20 PM

It isn't labeled as "bridge mode," which makes it harder to find-you have to know what it's called first. On the Network tab in the AirPort Admin Utility, uncheck the "Distribute IP addresses" box. Note that this not only turns off the DHCP server in the base station, but it turns off NAT as well (which is specifically what you want). And note that this is for the AirPort Base Station, NOT the AirPort Express! I don't have one, and I don't know how that one is configured.

Krusty · Dec 7, 2005, 08:43 PM

Ahh yes, I think everyone in here is giving you the right advice. Judging from your diagram, everything "downstream" of the Airport is going to be on a different subnet than "PC Workstation" and "G4 Digital Audio" . I'd say that you MUST have set the RJ45 router up correctly or your Xbox and random laptops probably wouldn't be working correctly. The big idea here is to get the Airport set up in the same passive mode that the 2nd router probably already is. The Xincom should be running the whole show.

One other tip that my help make sense of your network, I would go in the Xincom and see if you can assign stationary IPs to all devices downstream of it (i.e. assign "PC Workstation" to always be 192.168.0.2, "G4 Digital Audio" to always be 192.168.0.3, etc. ). My little network (which also sports a 5-port switch that I failed to mention) has now grown to 2 desktop macs, 1 wireless iBook, 1 wireless PC notebook, 1 PS2, 1 wired PC desktop, and of course the wireless router "downstream" of the wired one and switch ... I've found that it sure helps (especially for making shortcuts to servers, forwarding ports, etc) to always know exactly what IP each device is going to get when it connects.