One handy feature of Airport Expressen is that you can dump one upstairs next to your cable modem, and then dump one downstairs, next to your XBox, and set them up so that the Ethernet port on the downstairs one bridges onto your WiFi network. However, if you wish to do this, you should not take the easy, obvious path of changing the Wireless Mode to "Join an Existing Wireless Network (Wireless Client)", because if you do this, the Airport Express will "help you" by disabling the Ethernet port.
Instead, you should connect to the Airport that's attached to the cable modem, and go to the WDS tab, and make it the master, and then add the downstairs one (from the same tab) as a client. The Airport Admin utility will take care of setting up the parameters on both. Once I figured this out, I was happy, but I was unhappy that the really obvious route turns out to disable the one piece of functionality I really need.
(Posted from my laptop, which is currently connected via Ethernet on the downstairs box, as a testing measure.)
Addendum: Why, you might ask, is this important? Well, for one thing, I want to use XBox Live and the goofy little EyeHome box without running a several hundred foot Ethernet cable from upstairs to downstairs. (Although I could, mind you -- I have such a cable, and used it for exactly that in Pittsburgh, back in the pre-millenial days of yore).
But there's actually an even stupider reason. See. Our new house -- which is lovely in all other respects -- has such amenities as a cable jack within spitting distance of everywhere you stand. But as far as I can tell, there's one. Phone. Jack.
In the kitchen.
This does not help me have my lovely TiVo dial up nightly to learn of the latest important schedule changes. So I bought a $12 USB Ethernet dongle, and should hopefully be good to go.
Update: TiVo + Ethernet works like a champ. My googling led me to believe I'd need to enter some kind elaborate telephone fake dialing prefix, but instead, when I hit the TiVo button, it gave me a message saying "HEY! You installed a network adapter! Go here to make it work!" (paraphrased). Basically, I just changed it from "Phone" to "Network" and victory was mine. I ♥ TiVo. 2:07:22 PM ()
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