Mac Airport Extreme ethernet problems

[#1]

Just wondering if anyone can help…

We run two desktop Macs, a printer, Logitech music player (via an NAS) across an ethernet network (TP Powerline plugs), with a BT fibre broadband supply. The ethernet network has always been reliable, but I got fed up with rebooting the Plusnet supplied router, so I bought an Apple Airport Extreme after reading good reviews about reliability.

I plugged the Apple router into the Openreach modem and the set-up seemed straightforward. It's great on wireless, but I'm having trouble with the ethernet. If I switch the wif-fi to my Mac off, the incoming ethernet signal is shown as live -  but it won't let me access emails or open a web browser. Do I need to make any changes to the settings?

Any guidance appreciated!

[#2]

sounds like a setup problem on either the pc the router or both/

the likely candidate is the router having buggy firmware, try giving your Ethernet port a fixed address either below the or above the dhcp range, chances are your wifi is switching off and then the router is registering client loss but not releaseing the ip address before its giving it out to the Ethernet port and that's causing an invalid mac address fault in the router's security checks....

its a known bug thats been around for several years and apple still haven't figured out how to fix it without paying Microsoft to use an off the shelf solution....

[#3]

Thanks nanotm.

As you're just about to realise, I have very little in the way of IT skills/knowledge. So forgive what are probably very silly questions, but do you mean the ethernet port that's running from the router to the ethernet network? And how do I go about giving it a fixed address?

[#4]

this should give you the answers http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_configure_a_static_dhcp_reservation_with_airport_extre...

[#5]

Thanks - I'll give it a try.