Switching profiles on AirPort Express

tbutler (apparently) - 07:08am Oct 7, 2004 PST
via email

(TidBITS connection: I'm hoping this is something that could be covered
in a future revision of Take Control of Your AirPort Network.)

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07738>

Has anyone here figured out an elegant way of switching profiles on an
AirPort Express when you switch it between two significantly different
networks?

Let me describe what I'm talking about. There are two main ways I use my
AirPort Express:

On the Road. I bought the Express to use as a portable AirPort base
station when I'm travelling (and it does very well at that, too!). In
this situation, the Express is getting its IP address from Ethernet, and
acting as a DHCP server over wireless.

At Home. Since I've got it, I decided to set it up at home for use with
AirTunes, and possibly sharing a USB printer down the road. (And
AirTunes turned out to be a lot nicer, and more fun, than I'd expected.
<g>) Here, the Express is connecting to my SMC Barracade 802.11b router
via wireless to get an IP address, and ignoring Ethernet.

I have profiles set up for each of these cases. So far, I'm all right.

The problem here comes when I switch locations - say, I take the Express
on the road. If I forget to switch profiles before I leave, I'm in
trouble; the AirPort Admin Utility can't find the Express, either via
wireless or if I dig out an Ethernet cable and hook up directly.

As far as I can tell, what's happening is the Express is searching for
my home wireless network to get an IP address; until it gets an IP
address, it can't be accessed by AirPort Admin Utility.

The only solution I've found so far is to do a hard reset, returning the
Express to default settings (such as Apple Network xxxxx); this usually
lets the Admin utility find the Express, at which point I can load the
appropriate profile.

I really want to find a better solution than this. I don't always have
something suitable close to hand to press the little mini-reset button,
and I'm a little worried how durable it'll be after fairly constant use.
It's also somewhat tedious to wait for the Express to go through its
full reset process, and every time I do a hard reset I get a new
untitled profile that I have to delete.

There are a couple of options I can see for the future, although neither
one helps the situation now:

* At the very least, I'd like to see a more solid/easy to use reset
button, if it's going to get this kind of frequent use; something like
the button on the old G3/G4 tower case, or the last G3 iMacs, would be
great.

* Add a way to switch profiles directly on the AirPort Express. I can't
really see Apple doing this, because it would require a hardware
redesign, extra parts, and spoil the clean design; but if Apple can find
an elegant way to do it...

* More realistically, would it be possible for Apple to change the
Express's operating program (via a firmware update, to work on older
models as well?) so that if it can't find the network connection it's
supposed to use, after a certain timeout period it would automatically
switch to another profile, so you could connect to it via AirPort Admin
Utility and switch to the profile you want? Ideally, the user would be
able to set up a series of alternate profiles, so that the AirPort
Express would automatically switch between alternate network connections
as smoothly as a Powerbook does under OS X...

Hmmm. The more I think about it, the more I REALLY want that last
option...

Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.