do these new airport extremes allow connection to telstra cable? I know the old ones don't as I bought one and it turned out to be the most expensive paper weight ever

Huh ??

I use an old model Extreme Base Station connected to Bigpond Cable via a Motorola Surfboard Modem conected to the WAN port. And use Launch! to authenticate and maintain the (soon to be gone) heartbeat. - Its been set up like this for about 4 years now !!

I have the same setup as jimWOz - no problems here either.

BTW - when are we losing heartbeat???

Lots of talk, no action for many months.

mutters

I forgot we were even promised the loss of heartbeat, it's been that long.

I connect to telstra cable using an Aiport Express and have never had any dramas.

I, like Ash was never able to get my Bigpond cable connected to my Airport Express. The thing is in my drawer now. I too am looking at buying an Airport Extreme but have the same concerns.

Well so far my Bigpond/Airport Extreme experience has been crap.

Seems that I am still stuck on the heartbeat thing, and I have to get bigpond to move me over to the new billing system or get child accounts for the 2 other comps in the house or only log one comp on at a time. I will be taking the new billing system option. The others are stupid or extra cost options.

If anyone else has any other suggestions please let me know. I was able to get a netgear router working with some dns details from bigpond cable but the same solution is not working.

Thanks

Well it seems that you cannot request to be transfered from the old billing system to the new one, you just have to wait "about 2-3 months".

I hate bigpond cable. I will never use bigpond again.

You can get them to disconnect and reconnect you, and you'll be placed on the new billing system. That comes with a nice 12 month contract. I read somewhere that the migration for current users is happening in May.

I have 3 machines connected with Bigpond Cable to the internet happily via an old model airport Extreme and motorola surfboard modem. I use Jamie Curmi's Launch! connection client. I have it installed on all machines. But so long as it is running on one machine, the others can connect to the internet. Of course if the one running the client shuts down, then the others lose connection, so I usually run Launch! on each machine, that way you can be sure to stay connected.

If I have to disconnect I will be connecting to someone else.

Ok, well the above seems like a workable in the meantime solution, only I can't get it working. I have found some great instrctuions here only that are a bit outdated. Anyone know of any updated instructions?

Thanks
Morgs

Not sure what can be wrong Morgs.

Plug the Modem into the WAN port on the Airport, not the LAN Port.
Do you have all lights on the modem ? Bottom one should be flashing.

Configure Airport using Airport Admin Utility:
Under Internet, Connect using Ethernet, Configure using DHCP, Domain name QLD.bigpond.net.au - in my case. DNS server 61.9.211.33 - in my case. Different in other states.
Under Network, Tick Distribute IP adresses, and select share a single IP address.

In Launch! preferences, general, Enter your bigpond username and password, tick auto connect when starting Launch!.

In network preferences, under TCP/IP configure IPv4 using DHCP, and make sure PPPoE is unticked. I just looked at the Bigpond Cable help and it shows ticked, but PPPoe protocol is for ADSL not Cable !! They appear to have the Mac Cable and ADSL instructions crossed over !! - Dummies.

Try this out.
As I posted above, have I've been running like this for about 4 years !

Hey JimWOz,

That is pretty much what I tried but I think that there also needed to be some port forwarding. Things are also a bit different in the new airport admin utility. Enough to be unsure if I have it right or not. If I have more time tonight, I will try and recreate the info that is at ozcableguy site, and see if a few of us here can't update the instructions for the new airport extreme while we wait for the updated bigpond accounts.

Thanks
Morgs

No port forwarding required. Just use DHCP & NAT to share the WAN IP address with all the macs on your network.

The only drawback I've found is that a mac used as a file server with a static IP address assigned is unable to connect to the internet. (it must have an IP assigned by the DHCP server in the airport to connect) A static IP means you can reconnect to your file server mac using a desktop shortcut/alias, because it is always at the same address.
You assign static IP's to printers etc too, which is fine, as they're not connecting to the internet.

Whenever the Airport is turned off or restarted, (if you leave Airport base station on machines will get the same IP each time they startup) it depends on the startup sequence of the connected macs as to what IP they get. Hence a shortcut/alias to another machine may not work anymore, and you need to reconnect longhand using the network browser - Go - Connect to Server etc.

Ok, well in the end I went with Patience and finally our cable account is without the Heartbeat.

Happy Days. My Airport Extreme rocks.