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Question: The one thing I'm not certain about is this: should the SSID on the extender match the SSID on the router? I wasn't sure if they were supposed to look like one network or if you were supposed to connect to one device or the other.


Apple has a decent WDS setup document here explaining WDS. Basicially WDS can do range extension with matching SSIDs or differing ones. The one mandatory aspect is that the channels must be the same. Setting the same SSID will allow a client to seamlessly roam between basestations, with the client picking the best signal strength.

If your not doing range extension and have actual ethernet access to both wireless base stations, the proper thing to so is set the same SSID, but assign different channels, preferably with 1, 6 or 11 in the US. This is how big sites do it. It's also how I run my two Airport Expresses, one on channel 1, one on 11, both with their own ethernet connection. With the coverage I have setup, I get 48-54 MBit connections anywhere inside.

One handy thing about the Airport stuff (that I'm suprised no other vendor has copied) is the config software. I plugged both in new, ran the setup software, and it offered to set up WDS for me by configuring both. It simply set the wireless network of the computer to log into the default name on each to make the changes. And thankfully, the default SSID isn't something generic like "Linksys". It was Airport, then part of the MAC address.