Resolved How to connect 3 Airport Extremes via Ethernet?

[nothingtoseehere]

Hi everyone,
Looking for help, and sorry if this has already been answered but I couldn‘t find it, so here is my challenge:
I have two ethernet-wired Airport Extremes in my roaming network. To cover also the garden, I would like to add a third one, preferably also by ethernet.
As far as I understand, this would be the recommended way to do it:

Unfortunately, I do not have enough ethernet connections to do this. What I could do is:

Would this also work?

 

[techwarrior]

Sure, that would work.

 

[sourdoughjosh]

Sure, that would work.

Yes! This is correct (as long as at least AE2 and AE3 are in bridge mode).

 

[georgB]

Yeah, that ought to work (I haven't tried it). BUT, just FYI: I got an eero setup a few months ago, and it's great! Very easy to set up, works like a charm, and not too expensive. I have the eero 3, I understand the eero 6, which came out recently, is even better.

 

[mmomega]

Hi everyone,
Looking for help, and sorry if this has already been answered but I couldn‘t find it, so here is my challenge:
I have two ethernet-wired Airport Extremes in my roaming network. To cover also the garden, I would like to add a third one, preferably also by ethernet.
As far as I understand, this would be the recommended way to do it:

View attachment 1681736

Unfortunately, I do not have enough ethernet connections to do this. What I could do is:

View attachment 1681742

Would this also work?

Either will work.
I used to run 3 quite some time ago as well. Just run the additional AEBS in bridged mode and not router mode.

The BEST idea is running them hardwired. I felt like applauding your post. 🤣
Wireless-extending is just poo.

 

[georgB]

The BEST idea is running them hardwired. I felt like applauding your post. 🤣
Wireless-extending is just poo.

While I imagine wired connections are probably fastest (never tried it, house too big), my eero 3 mesh isn’t too far behind (and much better than what I had with Apple Airports). My ISP contract is for 150/20 Mbps, and that’s what I get when I’m in the same room as the base station, but even in other far-away rooms on other floors, fed by other eero satellites, I still get no less than 100/20, but usually 120/20 or more. 2/3-3/4 of top speed isn’t too shabby. Of course, YMMV.

(I have no interest in or connection with the eero company.)

 

[nothingtoseehere]

Thanks to everyone! All is installed, works like a charm 👍😋

 

[mavots]

Yeah, that ought to work (I haven't tried it). BUT, just FYI: I got an eero setup a few months ago, and it's great! Very easy to set up, works like a charm, and not too expensive. I have the eero 3, I understand the eero 6, which came out recently, is even better.

Georg,
I am getting ready to chuck my Airport Extreme network for something better and eero has come up. I'm paying for a 400Mbps max internet service (Xfinity) and on a good day get 100Mbps in my office and 150Mbps if I am in the room with the modem and AE router. Usually its about 70Mbps in any other room.

So many options (eero 3 or 6 seems interesting), but the one thing it must to do is work with the very "dumb" 1980's Yamaha receiver in my living room and stream iTunes radio and music. I currently use an AE which is rock solid. iTunes sees the AE and I can just turn it on or off from my office Mac. Whatever mesh system replaces my Airport network will need to keep a plug-in streaming capability to my living room stereo.

I'm curoius if you had anything like that to deal witjh. Or anyone else who reads this.
Techwarrior mentioned a Synology RT2600/2200 system.

 

[satcomer]

Georg,
I am getting ready to chuck my Airport Extreme network for something better and eero has come up. I'm paying for a 400Mbps max internet service (Xfinity) and on a good day get 100Mbps in my office and 150Mbps if I am in the room with the modem and AE router. Usually its about 70Mbps in any other room.

So many options (eero 3 or 6 seems interesting), but the one thing it must to do is work with the very "dumb" 1980's Yamaha receiver in my living room and stream iTunes radio and music. I currently use an AE which is rock solid. iTunes sees the AE and I can just turn it on or off from my office Mac. Whatever mesh system replaces my Airport network will need to keep a plug-in streaming capability to my living room stereo.

I'm curoius if you had anything like that to deal witjh. Or anyone else who reads this.
Techwarrior mentioned a Synology RT2600/2200 system.

Yea I have some knowledge that Synology is going Wi-Fi 6 in the second or third quarter on 2021! Something the current router does is been forming AC when everyone else is NOT doing!

 

[mmomega]

While I imagine wired connections are probably fastest (never tried it, house too big), my eero 3 mesh isn’t too far behind (and much better than what I had with Apple Airports). My ISP contract is for 150/20 Mbps, and that’s what I get when I’m in the same room as the base station, but even in other far-away rooms on other floors, fed by other eero satellites, I still get no less than 100/20, but usually 120/20 or more. 2/3-3/4 of top speed isn’t too shabby. Of course, YMMV.

(I have no interest in or connection with the eero company.)

I know the thread is marked as resolved but just to expand on my reasoning.
My house is right at 3,000 sq ft so running the wires weren't the simplest but I can completely understand why someone would not want to as I would just want them to understand why I would.

The consistent speed was one of the last reasons. I only had 50Mbps at the time.

Latency across devices is much, much less.

It removes WiFi related issues and troubleshooting. Which was THE issue at the time. When I did have wifi issues I never knew if it was the router, the access point, the client, interferences, the channel it was on... and on and on. So if anything, hardwiring removed many of the 'headaches' over the years.

I didn't run everything in one shot. Attics in Texas are way too hot for that and hats off to those who do this for a living.
But everytime I thought about running another line or two, it was 90-100+degrees, smh.

 

[nothingtoseehere]

I know the thread is marked as resolved but just to expand on my reasoning.

That is perfectly fine - I marked it as resolved as my question was very successfully resolved thanks to the input of you all 👍 If there are other questions to be discussed here, I do not mind

I fully support @mmomega - I have around 1900 square feet, and one of our better decisions when we renovated the house was to care for ethernet cables when the general wiring was done. In the light of hindsight, we would have had even more cables but it enough to have at least one wired access point on every floor. Apple TV 4K is connected with an ethernet cable to one of the Airport Extremes - works really well.

So if you own your home, and if you do something with the walls - wiring, plastering, hanging wallpapers - I would recommend to think about ethernet cables.

Of course, there are also very good WLAN solutions around. If we hadn‘t already thought of Ethernet back then, I am sure we would not rip the walls again only for Ethernet but use WLAN...