Airport Express: Internet Access Works But Not "Seen" in Admin. Util. ??

Question

Hi All --
I have a friend with the set-up described below and a seemingly impossible problem. he's asked for my help, and so I'm asking for yours, because frankly the situation just has me stumped. Here goes:
Set-Up & Other Relevant Facts
• DSL connection comes out of the phone jack and goes to a Westell model 6100 modem.
• From there, a short Ethernet cable goes to a Linksys 5-Port Workgroup Switch.
• Two Ethernet cables exit the Linksys Switch: one goes to a PC, and one goes to an Airport Express (AX).
• From the AX, a USB cable goes to a printer (a Brother 1440 laser printer).
• The AX is only about 10 feet from his PowerBook G4 15-inch and he gets a full (four-bar) signal on Airport menulet at the top of the screen.
• When he first set-up his system, the G4 and the Airport did set up the Brother printer (using the Airport Setup Assistant), and the Brother is listed as a printer on the G4's printer window or such.
• Both the G4 and the PC access the web fine via this setup (the G4 wirelessly). In System Preferences > Network, the Airport Network is listed, and it says "Airport is connected to the network Apple Network 6c6c1. You are connected to the Internet via Airport."
Problems
• When the Airport Admin Utility is opened, no Airport Express appears at all, even when "rescan" is repeatedly clicked.
How can this be? How can the PowerBook be connecting wirelessly to the Web through the Airport Express, but the Airport Express no be "seen" by the Airport Admin utility?
• In addition, although web surfing is possible for both PowerBook and PC, neither computer is able to successfully print to the Brother 1440. When he tried printing from the PC, he got the following error messages:
[Status for LPT1]
Result=(02)The printer on this port is not responding.
Status Line=BUSY:H,ACK:H,PE:H,SLCT:H,FALT:H,SLIN:L,HBSY:H,INIT:H,STB:H
Later, it seemed that printing from either computer would start and then stall, flashing a variety of different signals about spooling or "printer busy" and the like, all of which appeared to indicate things just weren't working right..
Anyway, the initial questions we're dealing with are the ones in bold above. The printer issues are probably are related and they can be addressed secondarily.
Any and all help with this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone.
-- JDee

Answer 1

Thanks for your reply- just to re focus my problem- I
have no issue with getting a wireless network "green
light"
Which is the cable modem correctly giving the Express an IP from your ISP's DHCP pool of numbers.
- my issue is I can't stream itunes or get a
usb printer to work off the xpress USB port.
I have checked everything as my posts explain- The
reason I have been looking at this thread is I have
never been able to see the airport in a "scan" per
JDee post.
That is odd and doesn't happen on my wireless network!
Nor have I read in any post that an extra
ip address is necessary
All routers have at least two IP's - an external and an internal. When the router acts as an internal DHCP server it hands out many more IP's. Your Express gets one external IP and the default internal one is set to 10.0.1.1 and the first IP handed out is 10.0.1.2, etc.
However I have seen different subnets- from dncp
server.
Are you talking about the external IP's that your ISP is randomly assigning without your control? Are you talking about the different ways you can configure the internal DHCP numbers? If not there's something else going on. Everything on Douglas internal network should have an IP from the Express DHCP server vs. JDee's internal IP's should all be assigned by the modem/router DHCP server. Once you have everything on the same network numbers AirTunes, printers, and Airport Admin Utility lists just work!
Hey look I really appreciate your help here in
anyway- I'm really stumped. I want to stream music
really bad... and just don't see why it won't work-
its drving me crazy...
I enjoy a good challenge, especially when they are solvable. After trying all the possible software and connection possibilities there's always the chance it's been a hardware failure all along
What IP number does your computer have and what number does the Express have? If it's a router it has two IP's!