So I’m in the process of trying to make chateau infidels home network work better. Based on my last thread I’ve nearly finished sorting the LAN portion but I’m now trying to sort the WiFi bit.

I have a BT home hub 4 which is plugged into out BT socket to give internet. In order to spread this wider round the house, this is hard wired to a home plug. The paired home plug is in the other end of the house and has a first generation Apple Airport express plugged into it. The airport express is configured to set up a wireless network and I have given it the same DNS name and password as the home hub. Both are set to the same security protocol.

The question I have regards DHCP. In truth I understand very little of what it does but I have read that a wireless access point should have the DHCP off. Should I turn it off (currently its on) and if so what do I do re IP address? My IP address range is 192.xxx.x.254 with a DHCP range from 192.xxx.x.64 to .253.

I tried to set the Airport express to static with an IP address ending .251 but got a warning from the airport utility so cancelled that and am seeking help!!

Anyone please have any understanding / guidance please!

Dhcp is probably best left on

This means your ap will get its ip address from the BT router
If the ap mentions dhcp server though then this needs disabling as you would then have 2 dhcp severs which is a bad idea

Router mode is off so I assume this means DHCP server is off?!!

You only need one DHCP server on your network, your home hub should do that and then turn DHCP off on your wireless repeater.

No problems setting the airport express to a static, probably best to set it to something under .64 though so it’s not in your dynamic range of addresses to avoid clashing with something else that gets given that address.

If you’re using an AE you’re probably better off ditching the HH4 wifi and getting an Airport Extreme (less than £50). Doing that would get you better range, dual band wifi, printer/usb hd sharing and you can daisy chain [wired or wirelessly] as many other Airport Extremes or Airport Expresses as you want.
This would give you a completely seamless wifi network)