Another networking question.

Abz Hussain · 10 Jul 2011 at 16:32

I have the following items:
1 X Netgear DG834PN Wireless Router/ 100Mbs Wired
1 X Apple Airport Extreme Dual Band Wireless Router/ Gigabit Wired
1X Netgear Gigabit Switch.

I have set them up as follows:

The DSL cable (from telephone socket) is plugged into the the DG834 - to get an internet connection. I have disabled all wireless access from this modem router.

I have one cat5e cable from port 1 on the DG834 plugged into the WAN port on the Airport Extreme. Then i have 2 cat5e cables plugged into 2 devices from the Airport Extreme Lan ports. From the remaining lan port on the Airport extreme i have cat5e cable to the gigabit switch.
From the Switch i have cat5e cables going to other devices.
All the devices are gigabit ready/enabled - the only item not gigabit enabled is the DG834PN modem/router. It is just providing the internet/broadband connection.

What i want to know is should i, with the above setup, have a wired gigabit network?

Does the link between the DG834 and the airport extreme limit my network to only 100Mbs as the DG834 is only a 100Mbs router - but then again, im only using it for the internet, the Airport extreme is my network router.

Im confused.

Dist · 10 Jul 2011 at 16:40

You should have a gigabit connection between any device that has a gigabit link all the way. The DG834 being 100 Mb doesn't matter as that is only used for data too/from the internet, which is limited much slower than that by your internet connection.

If possible I would say to avoid using the WAN port on the airport extreme, because the way you have it set up is to have Internet -> DG834 to Airport extreme as 1 network -> Airport extreme to other devices as a separate network. Idealy you would want everything on your side of the modem to be as one network.

Abz Hussain · 10 Jul 2011 at 16:49

Dist said:
You should have a gigabit connection between any device that has a gigabit link all the way. The DG834 being 100 Mb doesn't matter as that is only used for data too/from the internet, which is limited much slower than that by your internet connection.

If possible I would say to avoid using the WAN port on the airport extreme, because the way you have it set up is to have Internet -> DG834 to Airport extreme as 1 network -> Airport extreme to other devices as a separate network. Idealy you would want everything on your side of the modem to be as one network.

Thank you for the super quick reply. So are you saying to plug the ethernet cable from the DG834 to one of the three LAN ports on the Airport Extreme? If so, could i plug an ethernet cable in to the WAN port on the AE and run that cable to the switch and still have wired gigabit?

bigredshark · 10 Jul 2011 at 16:59

Dist said:
You should have a gigabit connection between any device that has a gigabit link all the way. The DG834 being 100 Mb doesn't matter as that is only used for data too/from the internet, which is limited much slower than that by your internet connection.

If possible I would say to avoid using the WAN port on the airport extreme, because the way you have it set up is to have Internet -> DG834 to Airport extreme as 1 network -> Airport extreme to other devices as a separate network. Idealy you would want everything on your side of the modem to be as one network.

OR just change the Airport to bridge mode and it'll switch between them normally...

Dist · 10 Jul 2011 at 18:07

bigredshark said:
OR just change the Airport to bridge mode and it'll switch between them normally...

Ah yes, if the airport extreme has that feature then use that. If it does not have a bridge mode then what I would suggest is a cable going from your modem/router to a LAN port on the airport extreme, then 1 cable from another LAN port to the gigabit switch, and all devices would connect to the switch or any remaining Airport Extreme LAN ports. The WAN port on the Airport Extreme should be empty unless it has a bridging mode like bigredshark mentioned.

Abz Hussain · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:06

Dist said:
Ah yes, if the airport extreme has that feature then use that. If it does not have a bridge mode then what I would suggest is a cable going from your modem/router to a LAN port on the airport extreme, then 1 cable from another LAN port to the gigabit switch, and all devices would connect to the switch or any remaining Airport Extreme LAN ports. The WAN port on the Airport Extreme should be empty unless it has a bridging mode like bigredshark mentioned.

Ok, just got this from the apple support website. Looks like i can use it as a bridge but can someone just confirm for me.

Question: Can AirPort Express act as a bridge?
Answer: AirPort Express can act as a bridge in three different ways:

If you have an existing wired network, it can bridge this network to wireless clients.
If it is set up as a WDS remote or relay station, it can bridge the wireless network to wired clients.
If it is set up as a WDS remote or relay station, it can bridge the wireless network to wireless clients (or "wirelessly extend" the range of the network).

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:09

Sell them and get an all-in-one device. This is what I would be doing as there is no need to have an over complicated setup like that.

Abz Hussain · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:42

iDroid84 said:
Sell them and get an all-in-one device. This is what I would be doing as there is no need to have an over complicated setup like that.

Two of the network devices are newish. Im going to play around with it a bit more to see what i actually have. As long as the network speed is gigabit between the local devices then im happy with that.
Im getting 10mb/s internet speed which is about right.
Thanks for your help everyone.

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 21:06

Abz Hussain said:
Two of the network devices are newish. Im going to play around with it a bit more to see what i actually have. As long as the network speed is gigabit between the local devices then im happy with that.
Im getting 10mb/s internet speed which is about right.
Thanks for your help everyone.

Then what you want is everything connected to the gig switch and one cable from the gig switch to the net router.

Even if the devices are new I still would be tempted to get a gig device all-in-one.

bigredshark · 11 Jul 2011 at 11:10

I'd stick with it, the Airport Extreme is a good device, wireless performance is really rather good. The three devices thing is annoying though...

Deleted member 77746 · 11 Jul 2011 at 11:32

bigredshark said:
I'd stick with it, the Airport Extreme is a good device, wireless performance is really rather good. The three devices thing is annoying though...

It's a real shame Apple don't do an ADSL version.

bigredshark · 11 Jul 2011 at 11:38

iDroid84 said:
It's a real shame Apple don't do an ADSL version.

It is a bit but I can understand why not, they get a lot of value from the Airport Extreme as it is, one unit fits a lot of markets for them.

Abz Hussain · 11 Jul 2011 at 16:53

bigredshark said:
I'd stick with it, the Airport Extreme is a good device, wireless performance is really rather good. The three devices thing is annoying though...

Yeh i must admit, the wireless performance of this little machine is just superb. Her indoors uses the wireless exclusively and shes chuffed with it. The 5GHz bandwidth seems to work fine for us although there have been reports of bad signals/coverage for other users.
Just a shame they only provide 3 LAN ports, i thought 4 was the standard.