Airport, NAS, & Mac Mini

I have recently been putting speakers throughout my home and utilizing airport expresses to create zones throughout.  The one big problem i come across is that if you choose to listen to pandora on your phone and airplay it is that you can only choose one location to play it.  Is this an airplay/airport express issue or strickly a pandora issue?  However, you can choose multiple locations, multiple volumn adjustments etc within itunes or the remote app.  I have an external HD hooked up to my mackbook air.  When the machine is shut down you obviously loose your ability to access your library thru itunes which affects my apple TV's as well.  I have been looking into Network Attached Storage.  It appears that I could relocate my music to the NAS without to much issue.  Now, if i got a mac mini and hooked it up as a media server to my home theater and used the itunes app on that to process everything would that work?  Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.  Also any recommendations on brands of NAS's that work well with OSX would help.

If you're using two interfaces on the same machine (e.g. the wired ethernet and the AirPort link) at the same time, they can not be in the same subnet. This means you can't use the same 10.x.x.x range on both interfaces at the same time.
As a result, to connect the NAS to the Mini via ethernet you will have to use a different subnet. This can either be a subnet you set (e.g. 192.168.x.x) or self-assigned (the 169.254.x.x you have right now).
As for other network clients seeing the NAS you have three options.
One is to have the Mini re-share the volumes (Mini mounts the NAS, clients mount the Mini). This does defeat the main purpose of using a NAS since it's only seen by one client.
Option two is to setup the Mini as a router to route between the wired and wireless networks. You'd need to add a static route to each client telling them how to get to the NAS (via the Mini's wireless address), but it could be done.
Your third option is to re-architect your network which may or may not be easy, depending on your setup. You can plug a hard drive directly into some AirPort Base Stations, for example, and have the base station act as the NAS.
You might also connect the NAS to a switch on the wired-side of your base station.
There may also be other options you could consider.

Similar Messages

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    I have recently been putting speakers throughout my home and utilizing airport expresses to create zones throughout.  The one big problem i come across is that if you choose to listen to pandora on your phone and airplay it is that you can only choose one location to play it.  Is this an airplay/airport express issue or strickly a pandora issue?  However, you can choose multiple locations, multiple volumn adjustments etc within itunes or the remote app.  I have an external HD hooked up to my mackbook air.  When the machine is shut down you obviously loose your ability to access your library thru itunes which affects my apple TV's as well.  I have been looking into Network Attached Storage.  It appears that I could relocate my music to the NAS without to much issue.  Now, if i got a mac mini and hooked it up as a media server to my home theater and used the itunes app on that to process everything would that work?  Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.  Also any recommendations on brands of NAS's that work well with OSX would help.

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    Message was edited by: varjak paw

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    PS. Your English is quite good & completely understandable.

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