Airport Express

Omnutia

I'm considering getting an airport express as it fills three big needs of mine quite nicely. Firstly, I want wireless internet, but my dad will blow his nut if I touch any of the network equipment, so I could take the LAN cable that goes to my room and use the airport express as a bridge. Secondly, near the plug socket is my hifi so I could run my music from my laptop (provided the person writing the Pluseaudio driver follows through) to my hifi. Thirdly, right bellow my hifi is my printer (A canon Pixma IP4300) and I could do my printing remotely. All together, a tidy solution.

Questions, questions (numbered for your replying convenience).
1)Has anyone had experience with an airport express?
2)Could I use mac address filtering instead of WPA so I can use my DS?
3)Are there any cheaper alternatives?
4)How does printing over a network work? Is the driver on the client computer or on the print server?
5)What is sound quality like over a wireless network? (Skype sounds ok even over a broardband connection so 54mb/s wireless should sound ok, right?)
6)Any other thoughts on what I'm trying to achieve?

Bonus question!
7)Could I use MAC address filtering to create an open access point that people can check email on but is too slow to use for regular browsing?

George Patches

So you can plug a stereo into this thing and a printer? That's pretty neat. I was gonna say "just get a linksys router, it'll do the same thing" but I can't think of anything that would offer that functionality.

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So you can plug a stereo into this thing and a printer? That's pretty neat. I was gonna say "just get a linksys router, it'll do the same thing" but I can't think of anything that would offer that functionality.

Note the USB and the headphone jack.

1) No.
2) Doubt it.
3) No idea.
4) The driver needs to be on the print server as far as I know.
5) As long as you can send the data reliably at bitrate speeds you should have no problem. Packet loss and signal interference are the problems here, though I doubt they'll be at such an extreme that you can't stream 320 kilobits to that thing.
6) Good luck?
7) Not without a second wireless access point which is connected to the first. You will then have to limit the speeds of the second wireless access point in the first one to such a point whereas regular browser becomes slow and worthless. That way anyone can connect to the second access point, and use the internet, but only at the set maximum speeds.

kiwi_bird

I can say from experience that setting up a Canon Pixma as a network printer is a pain in the ass.

Omnutia

Printing seems sorted. My DS can go screw itself, I'll just use WPA (After some thought, why bother using the DS WFC? I'll just get pwnd on Mario Kart).

Gunfire

I can say from experience that setting up a Canon Pixma as a network printer is a pain in the ass.

Seconded.

Omnutia

I think the protocol used by the airport express acts as a go between for the printer and the computer driver.