My Netcomm wirless router died the other day, so I decided to purchase an Airport extreme as its replacement. When I got home I started thinking (oops maybe thats my problem) the way my home network is configured is as follows.

Broadband comes into lounge room where it then went to my netcomm router. Then it connects to the PC which is located there by CAT5 it also connects to a Laptop via wireless and a ibook via CAT5 and lastly to my IMac via wireless.

The question is....Do I need to change this configuration or will it still work fine this way.

I know they silly questions but I am only new to all these networking thingies

It will work the same way. My configuration has the broadband line into a modem. That's plugged into the Airport Extreme. Macs and PCs (and a friend's Playstation) then connected to the Airport Extreme either by being plugged in using the Ethernet ports or wirelessly.

Note that the Airport Extreme is only a router and does not include a built-in modem. One thing you will need to determine is whether the modem or Airport Extreme acts as the DHCP router (ie: gives out the IP addresses on the network) as only one of them should do so. I have the modem doing that and set the Airport Extreme to be in bridge mode. The utility for configuring the Airport Extreme is stupidly easy to use so it will be easier than it sounds to get it running.

Feel free to ask if you have more question.

I can confirm Graham's comments. I have a similar configuration and it works fine.

It is possible to get the Airport Extreme to talk with your modem with logon details and password and log onto the internet for you - it works great! I forgot how I did it though, took a little bit of fiddling but as a result the network is very stable and reliable.

What sort of distances do you guys get with the Airport and your laptops?

leachy,

iBook g4 ~35 m
MBP C2D ~12 m