MP w/o Airport to connect wifi with TC?

[toke lahti]

Friend of mine would like to connect his macPro, which does not have internal airPort, wirelessly to his home network with ISP's router.
Is it possible to use time capsule he already has as wireless link as "media bridge" or does he need to buy badly outdated airportExpress for this or some other cheap link/bridge?

 

[flehman]

If your friend is prepared to spend $$ on an AirPort Express, he might consider spending on either the OEM internal 802.11n AirPort card or one of the newer Broadcom cards with the mPCIE adapter for that is 802.11ac compatible. Either of these cards installs to the mPCIE slot on the motherboard and you have Wifi. The 802.11n can probably be had for 30 bucks give or take, the Broadcom for not much more.

 

[h9826790]

Yes, it can. However, the speed will be limited to 100Mb/s. The Airport Express only support 100Mb/s via cable.

Anyway, there is no need to use Airport Express as the bridge. For the Mac Pro, it's just a source to give it the network signal via cable. Is it an Airport Express, any other router, or the cable modem? Doesn't really matter.

 

[s-hatland]

i did this with a powermac g4 back in the airport extreme days. essentially just used the airport to extend the network and plugged an ethernet cable from the extreme to the mac. worked like a charm and see no reason why it wouldn't work now given that the your friends mac pro is close enough to the express.

 

[toke lahti]

Yes, it can.

So TC can't do this, but AE can?

Anyway, there is no need to use Airport Express as the bridge.

But you need to have a bridge, so you are recommending just anything?

 

[h9826790]

So TC can't do this, but AE can?

But you need to have a bridge, so you are recommending just anything?

Both TC and AE can. TC and Airport Extreme can provide 1000Mb/s via cable, but the Airport Express can only handle 100Mb/s via cable.

So, unless your friend only use it for slow internet. Otherwise, I will not recommend him to use Airport Express for this purpose, because it will slow everything down on the intranet a lot.

If money is not an issue, Airport Extreme is a better choice (or even Time Capsule if it's useful). Otherwise, many other Wi-Fi extender can do the same thing. Some Wi-Fi extender has 4 Gigabit Ethernet port, support 802.11ac, but much cheaper than the Airport Extreme. Of course, they won't look as good as the AE.

The main point is just to pick a box that can be setup as a Wi-Fi extender.

 

[toke lahti]

Both TC and AE can. TC and Airport Extreme can provide 1000Mb/s via cable, but the Airport Express can only handle 100Mb/s via cable.

So, unless your friend only use it for slow internet. Otherwise, I will not recommend him to use Airport Express for this purpose, because it will slow everything down on the intranet a lot.

If money is not an issue, Airport Extreme is a better choice (or even Time Capsule if it's useful). Otherwise, many other Wi-Fi extender can do the same thing. Some Wi-Fi extender has 4 Gigabit Ethernet port, support 802.11ac, but much cheaper than the Airport Extreme. Of course, they won't look as good as the AE.

The main point is just to pick a box that can be setup as a Wi-Fi extender.

Can you walk me through the settings?
In the AirPort Utility's main window "Other devices" does not seem to find the 4g-wlan-router. Should it?
Should I insert the name of 4g-router's wifi network to APU's "Wireless" page, which is set to "Extended"?

 

[h9826790]

The setup is inside the AE / TC that going to extend the network.

This is the capture from the iPhone airport utility, but the OSX one is more or less the same.