Setting up Airport Extreme and 2 Airport Express all wired

Our entire 3-story house is wired with Cat5e. I have an Airport Extreme (n) on our 3rd floor, and want to add 2 other wireless access points on floors 1 and 2, using my 2 new Airport Express units. They can be wired to my network on each floor. I want 3 wireless networks, one for each floor. It is OK to have a different wireless network name on each floor. Is this possible? I know that they all need different IP addresses. I am assuming that the Airport Express units have the same address. How hard is this? Is there a better way? I want the strongest possible wireless signal on each floor. Thanks.

Hey guys...I have very similar setup, 4 wireless routers in a fully cabled home and have been trouble shooting/reconfiguring it over the last 24 hours with help in this thread.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2737069&tstart=0
and here is my original on the topic you are managing:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2726382&tstart=0
I have a:
• motorola cable modem
• "head end" base station extreme in my basement
• time capsule on the east side of the fist floor
• base station extreme on west side of the first floor
• base station express upstairs centrally located.
• ipad, iphone 4 and a mac book pro (recent)
o All base stations are set to create a wireless network
o The head end base station is set to share a public IP
o The other base stations and the time capsule are set to bridge mode
o All have the same SSID
o All have the same password
I have tried several different configurations.....
My base stations are dual band and when both the 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz bands were set to the same SSID, thus allowing a client to choose the strongest band, I had trouble with wildly inconsistent speeds when connected to the 5Ghz band and did not have consistent switching between routers as I moved in the house. (I removed a cordless phone and that helped immensely.)
I crested a separate 5Ghz network and connected my mac to it. Switching from router to router as I moved through the house was good and fast but throughput speed was inconsistent, choppy and only maxed out when the mac was within a few feet of the base station.
I then directed the mac to the 2.4Ghz network. Speed and consistency were much, much better and I was achieving max speeds from almost anywhere regardless of which router I was connect to. However, oddly enough the mac wouldn't switch from router to router regularly. If I sat next to a router the mac would not let go of the previous connection, but if I toggled the airport off/on it would connect to the closer router. I presume that because I was getting max speed (25MBPS) from anywhere in the house, even though the mac was at times connected to the farthest router, the 2.4Ghz signal was not diminishing enough for the mac to switch even though I was right next to another router. Or I was just impatient, but would wait minutes for the switch.
As of this morning I am bringing my iphone and ipad onto the network to test it as is will be used that way. So far all client devices are switching routers no sure yet how long it takes, they switched overnight, and speeds (after a time cap backup) were stable at 24.8MBPS.
My hope was to establish a private 5Ghz network for me and a 2.4Ghz available for friends and family but the 5Ghz is just too temperamental.
Hope my experience helps…
Best regards
Marc

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