My home network is wired through a Dell gigabit switch which is connected to my AirPort extreme. Needless to say, this has worked well for me as the only wireless devices connected are mobile devices. I decided to set up another room in the house but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of running wires through the walls again. It’s undoubtably the best thing to do but this isn’t meant to be permanent. I figured the next best thing to do is extend the network by purchasing another AirPort Extreme. The hardware in it is better than an AirPort Express plus I get a few ports to hardwire a few devices. My rule of thumb is the less WiFi, the better.

If you’re given a Windows network path such as \\Foo\Bar then that basically means connect to shared folder Bar on the server Foo. To do this, you can go Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server... and type smb://Foo/Bar which is the equivalent.