I mentioned yesterday that I was having a geeky weekend (and I submit this post as partial evidence, your honor…) One thing I said was:
Music: I’m off to the Apple Store to see if they have an Airport Express in stock. I’m pining to stream my collection to the decent speakers in my apt (5.1 Acoustic Research – S-20’s)
So I did. Bought one.
… and so it didn’t. At least at first.
The Airport Express comes with an install CD. On it is the “Airport Express Assistant”. The Assistant is a nice bit of eye candy, but under the skin, what it really says is “it’s my first day on the job, and I don’t know how to do that yet”. I think it would work great for someone that isn’t very security minded.
My setup is: Road Runner Cable -> Airport Extreme. My PowerBook then gets onto my “javajoint” network wirelessly. The idea was to add the Airport Express to the “javajoint” network. Here are the obstacles ran into for my setup:
- I run a closed network (don’t broadcast the SSID). The asst. couldn’t see the very network I was connected to on my PowerBook.
- I run WPA, so I couldn’t take advantage of having the Extreme bridge to the Express with WDS (not the fault of the asst) – no biggie.
- My Extreme only allows access via MAC address, WPA, and a login. The asst didn’t detect the MAC address bit.
So it went something like this: … lets put the Express on its own network.. oh wait! That’s dumb, because then I can’t be on the internet and stream to the Express at the same time .. ok, let’s open up the closed network.. good, ok the Express can see “javajoint”. Damn, it’s still not working! Let’s reset the Express for the 5th time. … hmm. Ok, forget the asst. Let’s go into the Admin Utility. Hey, the MAC addresses! Forgot about those… Ok, we’ll export the list, delete them all, and see if the Express can get in. Ok? Good, that works.
Wait a minnit … I have to type in the MAC address for the Express? By hand? Oh man (wagging my finger at the “assistant” program, threatening to delete it forever). Damn, wrong MAC address .. the Express has one for the ethernet port, and one for the, er, wireless port … they are one digit apart.
So the result is:
- I am back to running a network that doesn’t broadcast the SSID
- Still running WPA, because I am surrounded by APs here (I see 5 others on a Sunday morning), and I don’t want to run WEP
- Express is known to the Extreme by MAC address
- It works! No thanks to the “Airport Express Assistant”
- Oh, and my HP 5150 DeskJet works fine with it.. that bit was easy.
So, all of these stories you read about how people have it working right out of the box… what sort of security could they possibly be running? (my guess is little to none) btw, yes, I know I gave out my SSID in this post – I am not worried about that – could be something completely different 5 minutes from now, ya? :-) (hey, what’s with that car sitting out on the street, 3 giggling teenagers with laptops, and why are they saying “mwah ha ha!”?!)
