Airport Express - Join an Existing Wireless Network

[Joe]

April 12, 2013

I have an Airport Express 802.11n (1st Generation), Version 7.6.3

Airport Utility 5.6.1

My Mac is an 867 MHz Quicksilver, running OS 10.5.8

There is NO WiFi card inside the Mac, I use an ethernet cable from the
Mac to the Airport Express. This Airport Express is one which has only
one ethernet port.

I use this setup solely to connect to a city run (free) WiFi network,
and it does okay, generally, the best results are usually between 2:00am
and 10:00am. I have used this setup since March 2011.

For about the last two weeks, the download speeds have been quite a bit
worse than usual, so it makes me wonder about a few things.

1. Would a newer model Airport Express do any better than my present
one?

2. Is there any way to test that the Airport Express is actually
functioning okay when it seems that the WiFi is extremely slow or zero
speed?

3. I have heard that just a few users, possibly just one, can tie up
the WiFi, say, by doing a torrent download of a movie. I am really
curious as to how this can happen. Doesn't any Wifi supplier have an
algorithm that time-slices usage, so that everyone slows down about
equally, instead of some massive hog keeping everyone else off?

4. The procedure that the Airport Express uses to connect to that city
run WiFi is a mystery to me.

The Network pane in System Preferences shows that the connection
proceeds in four steps, the first three take place in approximately 47
seconds from power on the Airport Express, the fourth step varies, as it
apparently is TRYING to connect to that WiFi network. The steps are:

i. The ethernet cable is not connected

ii. Ethernet - No IP address

iii. Ethernet - Self assigned IP address 169.something shows

iv. Ethernet connected. 172.something shows

Related to this "mystery" is the fact that Airport Utility is pretty
much non-functioning (saying it cannot find any wireless device) until
the 172.something WiFi connection is achieved.

The only way that I can use Airport Utility for much, without connecting
to that WiFi, is to push the little reset button for 10 seconds on the
Airport Express.

Is there any other way to get anything useful, such as how crowded the
WiFi is, or maybe to set another channel, using the Airport Utility?

It seems that the few times that I have set up the Airport Express
(starting from the push-the-little-reset-button-for-10-seconds) it has
been a little different each time. For instance, I'm pretty sure that
at one time in the past it asked if I want to use DHCP, but it didn't
ask this the last time I did the setup.

I think someone mentioned an e-book about setting up the Airport
Express. Anyone have any recommendations about this?

Thanks for reading this.

--- Joe

[David Stone]

In article <none-42712E.1...@earthlink.us.supernews.com>,

Joe <no...@given.now> wrote:
> I have an Airport Express 802.11n (1st Generation), Version 7.6.3
> Airport Utility 5.6.1
> My Mac is an 867 MHz Quicksilver, running OS 10.5.8
>
> There is NO WiFi card inside the Mac, I use an ethernet cable from the
> Mac to the Airport Express. This Airport Express is one which has only
> one ethernet port.
>
> I use this setup solely to connect to a city run (free) WiFi network,
> and it does okay, generally, the best results are usually between 2:00am
> and 10:00am. I have used this setup since March 2011.
>
> For about the last two weeks, the download speeds have been quite a bit
> worse than usual, so it makes me wonder about a few things.
>
> 1. Would a newer model Airport Express do any better than my present
> one?

Dubious, given you're connecting to a public WiFi service

> 2. Is there any way to test that the Airport Express is actually
> functioning okay when it seems that the WiFi is extremely slow or zero
> speed?

Not really; the problem is that you have no way to verify how well
or poorly the other end of your connection (i.e. the city access point)
is performing.

> 3. I have heard that just a few users, possibly just one, can tie up
> the WiFi, say, by doing a torrent download of a movie. I am really
> curious as to how this can happen. Doesn't any Wifi supplier have an
> algorithm that time-slices usage, so that everyone slows down about
> equally, instead of some massive hog keeping everyone else off?

Depends on the hardware, whether it has the options, and whether any
one actually bothered to set and implement such policies in the first
place.

> 4. The procedure that the Airport Express uses to connect to that city
> run WiFi is a mystery to me.
>
> The Network pane in System Preferences shows that the connection
> proceeds in four steps, the first three take place in approximately 47
> seconds from power on the Airport Express, the fourth step varies, as it
> apparently is TRYING to connect to that WiFi network. The steps are:
>
> i. The ethernet cable is not connected
> ii. Ethernet - No IP address
> iii. Ethernet - Self assigned IP address 169.something shows
> iv. Ethernet connected. 172.something shows

The sequence suggests that the Airport doesn't know that it's
functioning as a WiFi-to-LAN modem/router; it seems to be timing
out looking for a WAN connection on the ethernet port. I forget
the details in the Airport Utility software, but in the version
you have it ought to be possible to tell it you want it to
connect to the WAN via WiFi and serve the LAN on the ethernet
port. Sorry I can't be more specific - it's been a while since
I poked around inside that thing!

Did you check the user manual for the AE?