Yesterday i bought a shiny new Airport Express to connect my mac mini, witch has no Airport, to my Airport Extreme Base Station, because till yesterday there was a long cable, which went through the whole kitchen to the living room where the mini is.

It took me long to get it work and understand how the ethernet port from the Express acts. I read through the Apple Docs and found this. This made me think it is possible to connect wired clients to the Airport Express other people said this is not working, but the docs say it is.

The only thing i had to do is to build up a WDS. First i didn’t really understand how it works. I thought the Base station is building a wireless network and the Express connects to it, but i didn’t think that the Base Station need another wireless device to build a network.

After hours of failures, i tried again the assistent and watched what happen and it worked, it was to easy.

Both Stations are set to “Participate in a WDS Network”. The Airport extreme is set to be the “WDS main” and has the Express added as a “WDS Remote”. The Airport Express is set to be a WDS Remote and bridges all wired connections to the Extreme Base station.

Now if i connect a hub to the Express i’m even able to connect a whole bunch of wired clients to the Airport Express.