Airport base station setup

First step:

Locate all of the ports on the unit:

WAN means wide area network (usually the cable modem or DSL modem). This connects the access point to the outside world, so the symbol is a little circle: 0

LAN means local area network, like your home, this lab, or an office. The symbol for this is two arrows: <->

On the front is the status light. If everything is just peachy, it should be green. You will change all of this.

Next steps:

1. Reset the access point: hold a pen in the small puka on the back, while watching the power light. It should blink yellow, then fast yellow, then black. Take out the pen then. Restart the unit (take the power off and on). You should see a yellow light.

2. Access points can act as bridges, which pass all traffic from the WAN port to the LAN port and the wireless port (called the wLAN, for wireless LAN). This is where you will start.

3. Look on the back of the unit for very small letters that say "Airport ID". The last three pairs of numbers here will show up on your wireless scanner, if you have it set correctly.

4. On your laptop, change the location to "AP DHCP" which means it will get a random address from the access point. REMEMBER to reset this to Automatic before you leave class. If you don't the next class will be very cross, and be less likely to help you with the really hard stuff...

5. Choose the wireless network that matches the numbers on your access point. You should see a fan icon go black at this point.

6. Look at your network settings. What address do you see? Write this down.

7. Look in your Applications folder for a folder called Utilities. In there you should see the airport utility. Open this.

8. If you have correctly connected to the access point, you should see your access point in the window. Connect a working ethernet cable from the desktop switch to the WAN port on your access point.

9. See if you can browse the web.

10. Open the airport utility, and make sure you DO NOT allow the unit to extend a network. You want to create a new network (look on the left, under options).

11. Create a new network of your choosing, with the password p---77 which we use in the elab.

12. See if your friends can join your network.

13. Under wireless options, make your network only 5 gHz.

14. Under Network, find the access control list. Restrict one of your friends from getting to your access point by MAC address. Where can you find this?

15. Under network, change from bridge mode to DHCP and NAT. What IP address does your computer now have? (you may have to re-join the wireless network you have created).

16. Under port mappings, map port 80 (personal web server) to your IP address.

17. From another computer, go to safari and enter the IP address of your access point. It should show you the web server on your computer. This is called Port Mapping, or better: Inbound Port Mapping. It is useful for setting up Minecraft servers...whoa!

18. Finally, change the Internet settings on your access point to a fixed WAN IP address (listed on the board).