If your Airport is connected directly, just go on to the next step. If you’re Airport Extreme is not connected directly to your router, you’ll need to enable VLAN tagging on the the ports of your switch in order for it to pass the VLAN 1003 802.1q tags to your router.
Otherwise you’ll still have to give all of your guests a password, which might be useful for some people. Generally you’ll set the “Guest Network Security” to “None”. Again, most people use their normal SSID and add “-Guest” to it. At the bottom tick the box that says “Enable Guest Network” and enter the name you want to call the network. On the pop-up click edit and enter the devices password. Open the Airport Utility under Finder–>Go–>Utilities–>Airport Utility and then select the name of your Airport Extreme base station. The first thing you need to do is enable the Guest Network on the Airport Extreme. The question buzzing through my brain was “Is this really that simple? If enable VLAN tagging on those ports and turn on a VLAN interface on the MI424WR will it work?” Of course I had to find out! Enable the Airport Extreme Guest Network My ActionTech MI424WR is also plugged into this same switch.
This of course got my gears turning.Īll of my Airport Extremes plug into a Netgear ProSafe switch. That’s right! The guest network was just using a separate VLAN to operate. There were frames crossing the network with 802.1q tags on them. I plugged the Airport directly into my laptop with Wireshark installed and while watching the traffic I turned on the Guest Network feature. So this morning I decided to do a little tinkering. My network is too complex, and even if it wasn’t I have FiOS Internet which means I would have to call and get my ONT re-provisioned to use the Ethernet jack instead of MoCA (coax) which would be a major hassle. So for the last year I’ve been without a guest network, a feature that I really wanted because I refuse to use the Airport as my main router. They made the requirement that the main router that connects your home to the Internet also be an Airport Extreme, otherwise the Guest Network simply does not work. However, Apple did something only Apple does. This network is firewalled off from your home network, allowing guests to surf the web without getting access to your private data.
This feature allows you to create a second SSID, very simply that has access only to the internet. One of the features I was excited about was the Airport Extreme Guest Network. So I wanted to stick with them in my new house. Something Apple has generally been known for. I’ve always liked that the Airports just work, and always reliably. I bought several Airport Extremes when we built our new home in 2015. The Apple overlords have gone too far in this case, and I am going to show you how it really works! Using The Airport Extreme Guest Network with a Third Party Router The Airport Extreme Guest Wireless network can be used with almost any other brand of router as your main router, as long is it supports VLANs, but Apple has gone out of there way to make sure you don’t know that. And that really sucks when you need their gear to work with other manufactures products out of necessity and Apple we’re talking about things that have been industry standards for decades! Apple loves to make their technologies proprietary and compatible with only other Apple gear. This is one of those situations where Apple really pisses me off. Is it possible to use Apple’s Airport Extreme Guest Network without using the Airport as your main router? YES.
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