I have seen on the internet a few questions with regards to replacing the standard issued BT Homehub with an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. This is possible and I thought I would make a quick guide on how to achieve this.
The main gripe for me with the BT Homehub is that it only has 1 Gigabit port on it. Why BT didn’t choose to make all of them gigabit is beyond me.
Okay lets get started.
First of all we are going to need to plug unplug the WAN cable from the BT Homehub and place it into the WAN port on the Airport Base Station.
The BT infinity WAN port is labelled as BT Infinity and coloured Red. I’ve included a picture of the back for your reference
Unplug the cable from the red port and then plug it into the WAN port on the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. I have circled the correct port in the picture below.
The end result should be the same as below. You should have the WAN cable going from the BT Openreach modem box which is pictured at the top to the WAN port of the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station which is below.
Now plug a network cable from one of the other ports on the back of the Base Station to your mac.
For Ease so your at the same level as me I would recommend resetting the Base Station back to factory defaults. To do this make sure the Base Station is turned on and then hold in the reset button until the light at the front goes orange and flashes. The reset button is circled in red below.
Once reset open up Airport Utility on your mac. This can be found in Applications\Utilities. Once opened it should pick up the reset station and prompt you to set it up. If not click Other Airport Base Stations and select your one.
Once selected it will come up with a prompt for you to set it up. Enter your information into it then click next.
If you get a screen appear like below then check the WAN cable is firmly plugged in.
If all is well then It will now ask to configure the WAN. Select the options that I have below. In the password field just hit the spacebar. No password is required but the Base Station will insist one is entered.
Account Name : [email protected]
Password : hit the space bar once
Service Name : Leave Blank
Connection : Always On
Then Click next. It will now configure the device with the options. Once complete it will tell you its now available.
The light on the front of the Base Station should now be green and you can confirm all is okay by opening the Airport Utility once more and clicking on the Airport Extreme. It should show a public IP address has been assigned.
Job done. Keep your BT Homehub safe though as I suspect if you have any issues at all BT will only support the homehub.