Airport in Bridge mode "not a supported format." Are you F'n kidding me?

Question

Forgive me if I'm freakin' a bit but I am at my wits end with Apple. Here's the breakdown.
Fiber DSL into a standard wired 4 port D-Link router. Router is connected to HP 24 port switch because the D-Link does not have enough ports for my house. Switch feeds cat5 to all rooms in the house. Airport Extreme (newest version) is in living room and set to Bridge mode. I use it to connect multiple items in my entertainment area and wireless access for the Macbooks and iPhones.
Up to a few weeks ago I was connecting my iMac via wireless but got sick of the connection dropping (pings would be unresponsive for minutes on end). I ended up moving my desk and plugging into a cat5 port on the wall. Well guess what... it's still dropping. OK, I removed everything from the network and started adding things one at a time over the past few days. Everything was running better than ever until I plugged the Airport back into the network. Mind you, I'm not running my iMac into the Airport, it is simply on the same network.
After shaking my head for a while I called Apple. Well I just got off the phone w/ Tier 3 tech support for the Airport Extremes. I tell them that I have no idea why, but I'm only dropping connections when the Airport is on the network and I'm just curious if there is something in the settings that I'm missing. This is where it gets good... The brilliant Tier 3 "Technician" tells me that I am running an unsupported configuration because the Airport is running in bridge mode and it's attached to a wired router across the house. He says that if the D-Link router was also wireless he could help me. I asked what the difference was if it was wired or wireless but all he could say was he couldn't help me because it was a unsupported configuration.
So - I'm ready to send all my CrApple gear to some poor kids on the other side of the world. Anyone have any ideas here?

Answer 1

Bob Timmons wrote:
I'm reading the original post with the understanding that the AirPort Extreme is connected by ethernet to the network and the replies indicate that as well.
Are you saying that if the Extreme is in bridge mode connected by ethernet that the ports are not active?
Not at all. What I was trying to say was that the connection from the Extreme to the internet must go through the WAN port, not a LAN port. In a large network, this can happen unintentionally. For instance, suppose a client has Internet sharing enabled and is connected wirelessly to the Extreme and by Ethernet to another router. Then the internet connection from the other router would be shared with the entire subnet, including the Extreme through its LAN port. This could cause problems with the network.
However, with the network setup Jerastan describes, this does not seem to be the cause.