Airport Express will not connect to WiFi...

Ronan H

Hi... Just got an airport express base station today and may I just ask first off if anyone else thinks the instruction manual is diabolical? Or am I missing something very obvious?

I have Eircom BB with a wireless modem. I simply want to connect airport to the network. Apple reckon this is "simple" and that aiport does most of the work itself but that has not been my experience. I have just spent two hours trying to sort it out. Websites are giving instructions and referring to things in the Airport Utility GUI that do not exist, when I try to set it up it mucks up my Eircom network etc...

Can anyone please simply outline the steps to take to have Airport join my existing network? This is doing my head in and I am infuriated about the brutal instructions in the manual. To connect to an existing wireless network it says (and I paraphrase):

1. Open Airport Utilities
2. Follow onscreen instructions

Vague or what? Pathetic...

There are no onscreen instructions. It doesnt say if I have to connect to the Airport network or stay connected to Eircom, there are a number of menus and tabs with various settings and nothing in the way of a wizard even if you choose the "assist me" option...

Can anyone please help?

Head

aidan_walsh

You trying to connect to an Eircom Netopia in bridging mode?

Ronan H

Its one of the newer Netopia Modems, a silver one, but I dunno if it is in bridging mode. How would I find that out?

Head

Alun

It might help if you explained what it was you were actually trying to achieve by buying the thing in the first place seeing as you appear to already have a wireless router/modem.

Ronan H

Maybe you are not familiar with the product... The product is designed to play your iTunes library through any set of powered speakers in your house, well, thats one of the things it does. In order to do that it has to be joined to the network. Have a look at it on the Apple website if it helps...

http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/

Airport can function as a wireless router to replace your existing one, if thats what you want. To do that you have to connect ethernet cables etc... I don't want it to function as a wireless router as I have the Netopia already. I just want it to join the network so I can stream the music and move it around the house if needs be.

Head

Ronan H

While looking for a solution to this I accidentally stumbled upon some stuff about Eircoms wireless networks not being secure and to change security encryption from WEP to WPA etc... So I did this in the interest of security, and then figured I might as well try the whole Airtunes thing again just in case. It worked! So I'm sorted and well impressed with the whole thing...

Thanks for all the suggestions and replies.

Head