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.