Kevin,
As long as all your host machines and slaves have static IPs your'e fine.
Slave #1 will always be slave #1 as long as it's 192.168.1.103 -- regardless of where it is physically. In fact, all of your slave machines can be in a machine room.
The point of this thread is that VE Pro looks to slaves by IP -- so if the IP changes, it will forget -- and it's a good practice to set a satic IP and do everything possible to never change it.
In fact, I just bought a new router and the default gateway IP was 192.168.0.1, but ALL of my machines are on the 192.168.1.x subnet, so I simply changed the router, and we're happy.
I hope this helps.
J
PS -- I doubt that your airport has true gigabit throughput at the switch. And it definitely does not support jumbo frames. Probably worth investing in a dedicated gigabit switch and Cat6 wire.