stringfellow,

Very informative thread here and really appreciate your sharing of the amazing apple network setup.

My apple journey started about a year ago and still very new is this apple world. I'm also in the process of setting an apple network at home. Not as big scale as yours, but just want to achieve a basic home wireless network setup to enable sharing of files, music, photos, printing, and internet access.

I've the following devices at the moment:
1. iMAC
2. one PC running on Windows XP
3. a Canon wireless printer
4. Dlink 323 NAS (running on RAID 1)
5. Buffalo 2 in one wireless modem router

Right now what I really want to achieve is to make the printer available to all the PCs. I have a company laptop (Wins XP) too. I've no problem with the PC and laptop to print but not the Mac, eventhough I've installed the printer apps.

Also, I want wireless connection to my printer. Wiithout reading in detail, I bought the Airport Express, thinking it would help to solve the wireless connection between my Mac and the printer. I was wrong to find out that I need to use the USB connection for the Airport Express and printer before it can be shared to other PCs in the network. Is there any other way to make a truly wireless connection?

I'm also trying to get TimeMachine to backup directly into my Dlink NAS, would TimeCapsule able to bridge this gap? I understand that you are using a NAS purely for storage purposes and running on RAID 5 for failure protection. I'm a bit more greedy and wanting to use my NAS for backup and storage purposes.

Once I have a final solution on the printing and file storage and sharing, my next project would to the AppleTV.

Thanks for you advice in advance.

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Added on October 4, 2010, 9:01 pmAfter some further readings and testing, it is confirmed that the Airport Express cannot connect to non-apple modems wirelessly. Only through wired connection.

With my current equipments, the only way to setup print sharing is to connect the Airport Express to my modem via the Ethernet connection. Then connect the printer to the Airport Express via a USB cable. The problem is the bookshelf that I place my modem dont have enough room to place my printer.

This post has been edited by Ah_Wah: Oct 4 2010, 09:01 PM