A while back I discovered that the Airport Extreme Base Station wouldn’t properly handle an incoming PPTP VPN connection. Recently, because I moved my home automation setup to an ASUS EeeBox PC, I decided to switch back to PPTP by using an ASUS wireless router.

My goal was to have the AEBS continue to manage the wireless network and provide the included high-speed Ethernet ports. On the other side, the new ASUS router would handle the typical functions of a resdential router (firewall, DHCP, port forwarding, etc).

So far this setup has worked without any hiccups.

Configuring the AEBS for this setup was simple. I only had to change one setting.

  1. Open the Airport Utility
  2. Choose Manual Setup
  3. Select the Internet button at the top
  4. In the Connection Sharing drop-down choose Off (Bridge Mode)
  5. Update

I made one other configuration change, though this is optional. I wanted to manually assign the AEBS’s LAN IP so I went into the TCP/IP tab, changed the Configure IPv4 option to Manually, and set the appropriate IP information (in this case the Router Address points to the ASUS router).

Updated 09/14/2011: So far I haven’t had any problems with this setup. The two devices seem to be working well together.

2 responses to “How I Made the Airport Extreme Base Station “Play Nice” with an ASUS WL-520GU Wireless Router”

  1. […] with LAN ports that has most of the functions you would expect from a name brand router then an ASUS router might work […]

  2. […] A while back I purchased an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station to serve as our primary router and wireless access point. Though initially impressed, I learned that this expensive device wasn’t capable of fully permitting incoming PPTP VPN connections. In addition, it didn’t provide many configuration options. To work around this problem I purchased an ASUS wireless router and instead used the Airport as a wireless access point. […]

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I’m Mike

Welcome to my blog, which I have maintained for several years, off and on, to share things that I’ve learned from numerous projects and various problem solving escapades. This is my way of giving something back to the online communities that have helped me learn more about a wide variety of topics.