Airport Express, iTunes streaming, and Comcast

Sep 27, '04 09:53:00AM

Contributed by: dreamer-of-rules

We finally got iTunes streaming to work with our Airport Express at home, despite Comcast giving us "static" IP addresses in different subnets. It turns out to be a really simple fix. We pay extra for "globally addressable" IPs for our home network. We get them via DHCP, and they change about once a week. Our IPs are always in different subnets, which doesn't work for streaming iTunes. If we switch to a local subnet, then we lose Jabber (and BitTorrent).

Using the Airport Admin Utility, I can see that the Airport Express connected to the stereo is at 67.168.0.197 (for example). My laptop wireless interface is at 24.x.x.x. in a different subnet. I can give my laptop another IP address close to the Express using ifconfig (I tried doing this in System Preferences, but it won't let me add additional IPs to the Airport card). To do this, I open a Terminal and type:

sudo ifconfig en1 inet 67.168.0.196/30 add
This adds the new IP address, with a subnet of 255.255.255.252, to the en1 interface, which (on the Powerbook) is the Airport card. Typing ifconfig shows you all of the interfaces, so you can confirm which en[n] interface is your airport connection.

After typing in my password, iTunes displayed the streaming dropdown, and we were able to get Tom Petty smoothly streaming on our living room speakers. As a caution: although this works for me at home, I don't know if the stream is making its way over the internet, or having any other side effects.

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