Windows wireless network's route to the Airport Express

In recent months, several people have asked me about connecting a Windows or Linux PC to an Apple Extreme Base Station or Airport Express. I had not imagined it would be all that difficult, but I recently had to do the same thing and it turned out to be a far bigger problem than I thought.

There have been many problems over the years with this technology but they were caused mainly by rummy wireless card drivers.

The PC world was several years behind Apple in implementing built-in wireless technology but that has now changed. It is almost impossible to get a notebook computer that has not got wireless. Consequently, the drivers are already loaded. That is one big problem solved.

Apple, of course, was not content to support the standard 802.11b - it had to up the stakes to the faster 802.11g. That was not a big problem because the technologies are compatible.

However, it did cause a certain amount of confusion. Nevertheless, the Airport Base Stations are quite good and are reasonably easy to set up. (Apple for some odd reason decided not to go with a browser interface. That may have been for aesthetic reasons, but it does mean you must load Apple's software to administer the Base Station. Many users have complained about this).

The key to getting wireless computers attached to your Airport Base Station is something called the media access control (MAC) address. MAC is a hard-coded address. It identifies your network adaptor. It takes the form of a series of hexadecimal numbers, usually separated by colons. It would look like this: 00:11:22:33:44.