Travel Technology - Problem turning wired HSIA in a hotel room to WiFi using Airport Express

In the past I've had no problem turning a hotel's wired high-speed Internet access into WiFi simply by plugging in my Airport Express and going through the sign-up process.

The Le Meridien Budapest where I'm staying has free wired HSIA. What makes this different from my past experiences is that there's absolutely no sign up necessary. I just connect an Ethernet cable between their HSIA outlet and my MacBook and away I go. May or may not be relevant but WiFi is for-a-fee. I'm not sure this is related to why I'm not able to use Airport Express to establish WiFi in my room even though I choose my Airport Express's SSID and signal is very strong. I've run Airport diagnostics and bottom line is that it's saying Airport is OK but that the Internet connection is not live (or something to that effect).FWIW, the Network TCP/IP configuration I've set is "Automatic using DHCP."

Any Mac experts out there who may have a clue as to what's going on?

If the hotel is giving you a private IP in the same range that the aiport is using for DHCP then you could have problems.
Try changing the Airport's settings to assing address in a different range.
For instance, if you are using 192.168... then try either of these:
172.15.1.x or 10.1.y.z

While its unlikely, they can actually detect the airport express and disable the ethernet connection when you try and use it.

SpaceBass, Thanks for the response. When I am connected directly to the hotel's wired HSIA and check the network configuration, TCP/IP address is showing 192.168.0.49. When I momentarily disconnect the Ethernet cable and course it through Airport Express, the TCP/IP address is showing 10.0.1.2 for my Mac and 10.0.1.1 for the Airport Express. So there's no conflict there. Still no live Internet!

Totally guessing here, but remember this from one of our people last year on the road. Try the PPPOE solution on this page

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107530

if you haven't already. If the hotel is using DSL that may be it

Or it could be this

Using AirPort Admin Utility or AirPort Utility, check the "Public" or "WAN" IP address. If this address starts with a "10" or "192", your ISP is using restricted address ranges. This may affect the ability of the base station to share the Internet connection among computers. If you have difficulty connecting to some websites when the base station has a public IP address beginning with 10 or 192, use AirPort Admin Utility or AirPort Utility to turn off connection sharing for the base station. Only one computer will be able to connect through the base station. If you have a broadband modem, you may need to unplug its power supply for a few seconds to reset it. If that resolves your issue, contact your Internet service provider. In this configuration the base station is serving as a wireless bridge between your computer and the ISP, rather than as a wireless router. To connect more than one computer, your ISP would need to assign additional IP addresses to your account.

cordelli, you are a godsend. Although the problem wasn't exactly in connection sharing for the base station, your last comment gave me some ideas and I started mucking around with the Airport Express configuration. I remember reading something about setting the TCP/IP configuration on both the Network System Preferences and the Airport Express itself. It turns out that the TCP/IP setting on the Airport Express itself was previously set to "Configure Manually" and not "Using DHCP" which is what it should be. So all I did was to change that last bit of setting and everything's cool. Thanks for leading me in the right path.

The real mystery now is how the AE worked at all in those other hotels. I'll get to test that when I return to the hotels that I previously stayed at.

cordelli, you are a godsend. Although the problem wasn't exactly in connection sharing for the base station, your last comment gave me some ideas and I started mucking around with the Airport Express configuration. I remember reading something about setting the TCP/IP configuration on both the Network System Preferences and the Airport Express itself. It turns out that the TCP/IP setting on the Airport Express itself was previously set to "Configure Manually" and not "Using DHCP" which is what it should be. So all I did was to change that last bit of setting and everything's cool. Thanks for leading me in the right path.

The real mystery now is how the AE worked at all in those other hotels. I'll get to test that when I return to the hotels that I previously stayed at.


AE is great I love it but sometimes it takes some under the hood work to get things going specially in foreign countries. I would hide your signal.