Using an Airport Express to extend a wireless network using the LAN port

March 2nd, 2010

Recently Eliza and I signed up for Netflix. Ever since moving into our new apartment I haven’t had the Xbox 360 connected to the Internet because of the location of my cable modem/router and because the Xbox 360 does not come Wifi-enabled by default.

This hasn’t been too much of an issue since I haven’t been playing any games using the Xbox 360 (we’ve been playing a lot more Wii though) and haven’t needed any of the Live features. But, Netflix has an Xbox 360 application that makes it simple to stream any movies directly to your TV in HD. Daddy wants.

I didn’t want to spend the money for the “dongle” or whatever it is to give the Xbox 360 Wifi capability so I was very pleased when I came across Alex King’s blog post about using the Airport Express to provide a wired connection. I already have an Airport Express that I use for Airtunes to my surround sound set up which is right next to the Xbox 360. I’ve had Alex’s tutorial ‘starred’ in Google Reader for weeks and today I finally took the time to get it set up.

It works great. (And the Airtunes capability remains.)

Alex links to an Apple Support article that, inexplicably, isn’t complete. Where the article lacks Alex provides some tips so be sure to read both the support article and his blog post in full before you begin to help alleviate any headaches.

3 thoughts on “Using an Airport Express to extend a wireless network using the LAN port”

  1. Rodti

    The problem with using an Airport Express in WDS mode is that it effectively halves your bandwidth. I’m assuming here it’s an 802.11g Airport Express, it might be different for the 802.11n unit if that supports MIMO. That doesn’t effect everyone, but if you were streaming video over your network to other 802.11g devices you’ve a lot less bandwidth to play with.

    In my setup I have two Xbox 360s (both with the Microsoft 802.11g dongle) a dual-band Time Capsule and a Mac Mini media server. I had to extend the network using an 802.11g Airport Express and the Xbox at the ‘far end’ of the network suffers as a result :-(

  2. Diana LeRoi-Schmidt

    Thanks for sharing this. We’ve been at a loss as to how to get LG Blu-ray player to get wired internet. Living in an apartment we didn’t want to get into routing wires through walls.

    We picked up an Airport Express on Friday and I followed the directions from the Alex King’s site and now have a very happy husband who’s enjoying Netflix streaming.