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How To's

Set up an Airport Base Station
Setting up a base station is easy as long as you keep these general tips in mind:
  1. Set up your Mac to access the internet and e-mail - and make sure it works.
  2. Those settings will then be copied to the base station
  3. Set up your Mac to access the internet through Airport.
Actually going through the steps is almost as easy:
  1. Use the Internet setup assistant in the Assistants folder on your hard drive to set up your Mac for internet access
  2. Check to make sure that the internet & e-mail work correctly.
  3. Go back to the Assistants folder and double click the Airport Setup Assistant and complete the set up.
A couple of other issues to keep in mind.
  1. Sometimes the airport software on your computer may not start up the first time. Go to the control strip module for airport and select Open Airport. On the Airport window that opens, click the button to turn airport off, wait about 10 seconds, and then click it again to turn airport back on. You should then get a signal.
  2. The Airport base station has about a 150' radius. It does NOT require line of sight - i.e. it will transmit through walls etc. However, if the walls have metal studs, or the insulation has some type of metal backing, or the floor/ceiling is several inches of concrete, the range will be severely limited.
  3. It sometimes takes moving the airport up or down to find a position that will give you maximum range.
  4. Asante has a Airport/Router/hub combination that works extremely well so far. We have actually seen slightly better results (distance wise) from it than the Apple base station. Either is an excellent choice.