I just purchased an Airport Express to boost the signal of my Airport Extreme because my Airport Extreme is a full floor away from my machines.  Within about 8 hours of having gotten *everything* up and running with the new network configuration I noticed my WiFi was lagging.  Understanding that people are dishonest because of what I call “WiFi swinging” (ie. which is really WiFi slurping) I decided to tighten the access control of my little network.

I got everything set up on the Airport Extreme for timed WiFi access.  However, I noticed in the Aiport Utility that there was not a similar interface for managing timed access control (ACLs) on the Airport Express.  I did a little digging around through Google and found this Apple Support forum thread.  So, taking the advice found therein, I opted to configure my Airport Extreme “manually”, then I selected “File” -> “Save as…” and saved a *.baseconfig file of the Airport Extreme which also includes its ACLs.  Then I did a “manual” setup of the Airport Express and selected “File” -> “Import”.  In the “Import” dialog, I unchecked all but one of the device configuration options: the “Timed Access Control” option.  I clicked the “OK” button, rebooted the network device/Airport Express and…voila!  All my ACLs that were configured in the Airport Extreme were now configured in my Airport Express.  NICE!

Leave a Reply