James Blake

Until recently I have been using a Linksys 54g access point with no problem on my TiBook, AlBook, iBook and several PC laptops. About two weeks ago I purchased an AirPort Express for the AirTunes capability.

I decided today to bite the bullet and replace the Linksys with a AirPort Extreme base station and set up a Wireless Distribution System between the Extreme and the Express.

I really wish I hadn't, I have had nothing but trouble with it. I followed the instructions in the manual and have the Extreme with an SSID of 'Sprawl' and the Express with an SSID of 'Sprawl II' (if I set the SSID of both access points to the same, the Express will not come up - the light stays orange and the device is no longer configurable via the admin untility until you reset it); I set the WEP key to 128-bits and set them to the same value on both devices, for ease of configuration; I then enter the WDS page on the admin utility of the Extreme and configure it as the master and add the Express as a remote base station.

In the WDS page of the admin utility for both the Extreme and the Express I see the WDS link as active. I can then (for a period) ping both access points from a client connected to the Express (which is only wirelessly connected to the Extreme) - proving the WDS is working.

So I can browse the Web for a while, if I leave a ping up in the terminal window after a while I can see some huge packet loss (up to 40%) and the pings can rise to over 26000 ms. Eventually I will loose the connection to the nextwork and if I try to join either network (the signal strength does no change at any point, so it is not a drop out) I get a dialogue box saying 'An error has occurred while joining AirPort network .......' - and this is the best bit - the only way I can then reconnect to the network is to plug an Ethernet cable that is attached to the same network as the Airport Extreme in and then it lets me wirelessly connect to either base station again (!!!!!)

This is really screwy, I have quite a bit of experience in getting WDS to work between Proxim AP-2500s and AP-2000, but this is the weirdest behaviour I have seen.

Does anyone know what may be happening? Or does anyone else have a definitive guide to setting up WDS between the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express?

Thanks in advance



James