Airport base station - do I need to use bridge mode; what is bridge mode?

I’d shut off Wi-Fi on the Time Capsule, and access the NAS storage using wired connections via the mesh.

Unsupported, but has been workable in testing around here.

Bridged mode is what Apple calls their access point mode, and it’s unlikely to interoperate with a modern mesh router.

Most Wi-Fi can be configured to operate in either of two modes, access point, and routed. Access point means the wired and wireless are all in the same subnet, and roaming among APs works, while routed means subnetting is needed, and no roaming between routers.

I’d look to replace Time Capsule with a modern NAS that supports Time Machine Server, as even the youngest Time Capsule devices are getting old.

The answer depends a lot on your network setup, which we can't see, so you're going to have to dig a little deeper.

At the root of the issue is that the AirPort Base Station can run in one of two modes... router/NAT mode, or bridge.

The way to think of it is that as a bridge, there is unfettered, open access between the wired and wireless networks - they essentially act as one single network with everything on the wired network being able to 'see' everything on the wireless network, and vice versa.

In NAT mode, the base station acts as a gateway/traffic cop, with two distinct networks (typically wired and wireless), along with rules as to what traffic can pass.

Devices on one side (e.g. wired) typically cannot see devices on the wired side, unless you specifically configure access rules.

Typically you would configure as NAT mode when the base station is the first device connected to your ISP - this creates a control point so all the bad, ugly internet traffic cannot get to your internal network.

You'd use a bridge mode when you have some other device acting at the traffic cop and you simply want to add wireless access to your existing network.

Without knowing more about how your network is setup, it's hard to advise more, other than if you're setting up a mesh then the chances are you have some other router in place that's handling the NAT part, so bridge mode seems more likely.

Note, though, that the AirPort won't integrate with any other vendor's mesh system (meaning you cannot use it at part of the extended mesh network). It's fine to run alongside, but it will create a separate wireless network and your devices will have to decide which network (mesh or AirPort) to connect to.

This may all be moot, though - the chances are any modern mesh system will outperform an old AirPort Base Station, both in terms of performance and reliability, so I'm not sure there's a huge 'backup' use case, but it's your network :)

Mrclmomx2 wrote:

Camelot,

I have a cable internet provided that as of today is connected/ethernet to one of the TP-Link Deco routers (correct term?). A short ethernet cable came with the 3 router TP-Link mesh system. I used it to connect the Airport to the "main" TPD router.

Mesh routers, and that would be a typical setup.

I set the other two TPD routers up to be used wirelessly to strengthen the signal on the 2nd floor of our home primarily to help my daughter for her college work.

Mesh is useful when wired backhaul is not easily feasible.

We use wifi for tv streaming, laptop connection, and our phones (when home).

How well that works depends on interference, building construction, and other details.

The airport was being used to store the backup data for my laptop and prior laptops to include something like 60k photos/videos from over the years.

Will I still be able to use it for that purpose?

Yes, the Time Capsule can be used as a Time Machine target and as network attached storage. With the Wi-Fi turned off.

Time Capsule will be accessed by your current Wi-Fi gear and the wired network connection, and not via the (disabled) Wi-Fi on the Time Capsule.

The Time Capsule Wi-Fi will not work with the mesh routing you're using, and running Time Capsule as a separate Wi-Fi network has big downsides.

But I'd suggest getting newer gear for storing any valuable data. Time Capsule is old, getting older, and older gear gets increasingly failure-prone. If you want a newer NAS akin to Time Capsule, that might be TrueNAS and a "spare" x86-64 box, or can be a dedicated NAS box such as those from Synology. You do want a NAS with Time Machine Server support, though.

Can my daughter back-up her computer to it also since it is connected to one of the TPD routers by ethernet cable (the one that looks like an old, but larger phone cable, right?)

Configure your new W-Fi and wired, and wire the Time Capsule, and not accessed via its own Wi-Fi.

The airport is like 1 TB I think.

That's enough for a Mac with 256 GB of storage, while 512 GB storage would be getting tight. (And nothing else on the Time Capsule storage, just the backups.)

It's also gear somewhere between ~six years and ~sixteen years old, depending on the details.