How to use 2009-era Airport Extreme in Bridge Mode Wifi

airportNetworkwifi

I have a 2009-era Airport Extreme that used to provide routing and WiFi for our cablemodem. Time Warner updated our cablemodem to a DG860, which comes with its own built-in WiFi.

I'd like to re-purpose the Airport Extreme as a WiFi bridge. Specifically, I'd like to be able to plug my wired ethernet devices (e.g. a printer in the basement) into a LAN port on the Airport Extreme, and have it bridge to the Time Warner WiFi network.

When I attempt this in Airport Utility the most logical option seems to be "Add to an existing network", but it seems to expect to be physically plugged into the network. I.e. it wants to be plugged into the other router:

Airport Extreme setup

Is there a way to bridge the Airport Extreme over WiFi?

Best Answer

What you are describing is a WiFi extender. EG extending your Wifi network over WiFi. The basic two things you need to know are:

  1. No this Airport won't do that. I don't believe any will.
  2. WiFi repeaters just (usually) don't work very well.

TheWirecutter.com has a good take on it AND recommendations here http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-extender/.

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