[humboldtcorrado]

Hi,
So... Here's the deal. I have a Netgear WGR614v8 Router serving my cable connection to my macbook, ubuntu box, and iphone.
i have an airport express that a friend gave me. i had it set up and connected just to use for serving itunes music to my surround sound, next to my tv.
today, i picked up an xbox 360. it's hooked up to my tv/surround sound. instead of spending another $80 on a wireless connection setup for the xbox, i figured "hey, i could just run a cat5 cable from the xbox to the airport express basestation!
so i did. it wasn't working, as i had originally set up the basestation to 'join my wireless network', as i had no need to extend the signal.
so, i re-ran the setup assistant in the airport utility software, and went through the following steps..
1) 'i have a wireless network and want to add airport express or replace an existing device on my network'.
2) 'i want airport express to wirelessly join my current network'
3) 'extend the range of my airport extreme or airport express network'

i'm then presented with a popup menu where i can choose the network name of my existing network, so i do.

at this point, i went into my netgear setup page, and navigated to the 'wireless repeating function' under the Advanced section.
i enabled wireless repeating, and chose the option to make my netgear act as the Wireless Base Station. i then input the MAC address of my Airport Express basestation.

back to the airport setup utility...

so i choose the name of my existing network (pops up fine), but when it comes time to choose an 'apple wireless device' to join in the WDS Setup screen, nothing ever comes up... did apple **** me over and only allow bridging with other apple wireless devices, even though my netgear apparently supports WDS? am i missing something?

Thanks!

[Simon]

Are you sure you set your Express up as a WDS remote/relay? The AP Express needs to be set up for WDS in order to bridge to wired clients.

I have seen reports before of WDS not working properly between devices made by different manufacturers. And the fact that AP Utility says "Choose an Apple wireless device to join" might be subtle indication that the AP Express cannot connect to a non-Apple WDS base. Just a guess.

[humboldtcorrado]

hi simon,
thanks for the reply and the link. i just got home from work, spent about 5 minutes doing a 'manual setup', and everything magically started working.

let this be a lesson to anyone searching to do this in the future: the setup assistant sucks balls for setting up a WDS remote.

thanks for reading.

[Simon]

I think the important lesson to be learned is that when you're setting up an AP base station or TC it's best done while connected through Ethernet. Once everything is hunky-dory you can connect through wifi.

[Ted L. Nancy]

Originally Posted by humboldtcorrado 

i just got home from work, spent about 5 minutes doing a 'manual setup', and everything magically started working.

WDS is sooo freaky. They stopped using it with "n" networks because the gnomes that run WDS decided to charge extra for higher speeds.

It is typical - in fact it is expected - for a WDS setup procedure to work once time and not work another time. No one knows why this is, even the inventors of WDS.

And, btw, I'm shocked you got the Apple device to work with a non-Apple device. Did you bribe the gnomes? I'm curious-- Is the Express you've got an older one or a newer one with .11n?

[Ted L. Nancy]

(Deleted/edited because I'm an idiot.)