[yak22]

Ok, let me lay out my situation and then I’ll end with my question.

I have an Airport express hooked up to my stereo in my garage, but I just replaced the garage door recently with one that seems to be affecting my wireless reception in the garage. I only use this AEX for airtunes, along with my iPhone/remote to control my library.

What I was wondering is this…

Can I hardwire the AEX to my router and use it as mainly a wifi repeater (maybe not the correct term) along with airtunes? I already have cat5 run to the garage, so it would be easy enough to just plug it into the AEX on one side and the router in the house. But its important that the wireless still works and hopefully the AEX acts as another access point, so my iPhone can connect to my network, since it doesn’t have good reception in the garage at this point either.

Some suggestions on "how" I would configure this would be helpful as well.

Thanks for any help…

[Simon]

That will work just fine.

Set up the AP Express in bridge mode. That means your router will continue to handle DHCP/NAT while everything connected to your AP Express through wifi will be seen by all your other clients hooked up to your router. Air Tunes should work just fine as long as your router doesn't block any LAN ports (which consumer routers usually don't).

If you want the AP Express to also act a 'repeater' for your wifi that's easy too. Especially doing it seamlessly. Again, set it up in bridge mode. Then, you give it the same network name (SSID) as your primary wifi, but make sure it's running on another channel. Devices that are set to log on to your primary wifi should automatically switch to the AP Express wireless network whenever the primary wifi signal disappears. You can of course also switch manually. In Leopard and SL, option-clicking the AP menu will show you channel information.

[yak22]

Wow, thanks for the detailed explanation. I will give it a try, possibly this weekend.