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After setting up countless Airport Extreme and Express units for my clients, I’ve come to notice that while Apple’s Airport systems are quite stable once operational, they can still be a bit tricky to set up. While the below steps aren’t all-inclusive, they represent the general steps that I take when setting up a new network.
 1. Run the Mac OS X software updater on the Mac that you’ll be using to configure your network. This will download the latest Airport software and firmware updates, which may be used later, if Airport Admin Utility determines that yours is out of date.
2. Log into all wireless units and write down the current network settings (preferably in a text file on a Mac, so you can paste these values later). Notably, you’ll need the network name, encryption type and password, admin password (this password is “public” by default), router IP address, unit IP’s (if they’re set statically) and whether or not WDS (wireless distribution system) is enabled.
3. Write down all network MAC hardware addresses. MAC (media access control) numbers are semi-unique addresses used to identify each networking port on your network. They can be found both in the Airport Admin Utility, and written on the physical device itself. Because they are port based, some units (like Airport Extremes) can have 3 addresses (LAN, WAN, and Wireless). They look something like 01:23:45:67:89:ab. They can only contain 0 through 9 and A through F (hexadecimal base-16 values).
3. Reset devices. When setting up a new network, always do a full factory hard reset on all units involved in the installation, even if they're brand new; here are instructions for Extreme and Express . Time and time again I have skipped this step only to find that some tiny setting somewhere was changed, unbeknownst to me, which was hindering the entire setup process. On two occasions I also came across corrupted settings, which were fixed with a simple unit reset. Note: if you simply forgot the administrative password, you can do a soft reset (detailed in above instruction links).
4. From here you can begin to build the network, as appropriate for your situation. Also worth noting, always close Airport Admin Utility after configuring each unit. It seems to have a bug which makes this necessary, as of the time of this writing.
If you have any issues that aren't covered here, please note them in the comments and I'll get back to you shortly. :)
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