Hands0n
26th August 2007, 04:20 PM
I really must stay away from Bluewater as much as possible, every time I visit and approach the Apple store I seem to walk away with one of their products!
This weekend it was the turn of the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEB) to become a new member of the household :) The reason being that I wanted to update to 802.11n for the benefit of the MacBook Pro and the
suitably equipped PC Laptops that the family members have. I can't believe it but 802.11G (54Mbps) is beginning to actually "feel" slow! When moving stuff between the MBP and the Mac desktops the limitations of 54Mbps become more apparent.
The AEB is used in a mixed Windows and OS X environment - and it was this requirement that was a driver to go down this route rather than use another brand. Although I'm sure that some of the other 802.11n routers may well meet or even exceed the design spec of the AEB - what I saw on the Apple Store website (http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=94023922&nplm=MB053) for the AEB did it for me.
The AEB is packaged in the ususal Apple sturdy and functional box. A software CD for Mac and PC is provided, as is the obligatory skinny manual that comes with all Apple product.
Easy wireless networking
Connect your DSL or cable modem to the AirPort Extreme Base Station, then quickly set it up with the easy-to-use AirPort Utility, which is available for both Mac OS X and Windows. Within minutes, you and up to 50 others can use your Macs or PCs to surf the web, stream video, share photos, and more — without wires.
Errr, not quite! Setting up the AEB in place of my Linksys WiFi cable router was not without some difficulty. Configuring the AEB requires some network nous, which is fair enough, and I have that in bucket loads. But the expected ease of setup was not quite there in this instance. There seems to be very little status information and so debugging a fault I occasioned proved difficult without something to go by. In the end it turned out to be that the cable modem needed to be power-reset to allow the new AEB to obtain a valid DHCP-issued IP address. I'm sure that a less-network-savvy individual would have been returning the AEB to the Apple Store within hours of purchase! It certainly required a bit of experience and guesswork to figure out what was going wrong.
However, having got the AEB up and running the rest has been a snip. I used the same WPA/PSK key as before - and all the existing wireless hosts were immediately able to get onto the network without further administration.
Up to 2.5 times faster4, twice the range
AirPort Extreme uses next-generation 802.11n wireless technology and features multiple antennas to deliver maximum speed and range throughout your home, classroom, or small office. You can enjoy up to 2.5 times faster data transfer speeds and more than twice the range of 802.11g wireless networks.
First impressions are that the AEB is very fast indeed - both the wired and wireless hosts communicate with the Internet with a noticable speed increase. Even the 802.11g/b equipment seems to be Internetting with a performance gain! Could it be that the Linksys had its own internal throughput issues? It was, after all, a first generation device which has been superceded several times to the latest version of the hardware.
The AEB is supposed to offer, like all 802.11n routers, a greater wireless range, some 2 times we are told. I am inclined to agree that the range is greater. I was able to get my MBP to work at the end of the back garden, some 41 metres from the rear wall of the house. The router is at the front of the house and so the signal has had to punch through three internal walls and one floor to get to where I was standing. Previously the Linksys would tail off in less than half the distance I was standing today. And the suggestion, from the MBPs signal strength meter, is that I could have gone even further away before signal loss became apparent.
Other impressions
Mains power to the AEB is via the usual bump-in-the-cable external transformer. In this case is is a rather dinky little Apple-white box mid-way along the Apple-white power cable. The mains cable is fairly lengthy, and the low-voltage cable is probably some 2Metres long!!! I didn't need that kind of length, but it is nice to have more than less.
Although the mains transformer runs fairly cool, the AEB is hot enough to keep your nighttime cocoa warm for hours (well, what else are you supposed to use the pancake-fat AEB for). Beer and wine would be ruined in minutes! What is it with Apple and thermal qualities?
Four 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports adorn the rear of the AEB - one of the ports is for the WAN to a cable modem (or ADSL modem for that matter). The remaining three ports are for whatever you like - I would have liked to see four terminal ports. As it was I had previously run out of ports and run a 4-port Netgear gigabit Ethernet switch behind the AEB. Its all good, it works very well and the additional Layer 2 hop is insignificant.
I like the AEB, I like it a lot - and not just because it is Apple. Aesthetically it is appealing to the eye, it also does not dominate the study, being of a discrete design. I do not like the administration software supplied - it lacks tools to help diagnose network issues and problems. By comparison the status page on the Linksys rocks.
Other Stuff
I have not even touched the two rather bonus features of the AEB - something I am sure that I'll have an interest in the future.
Print without wires
Have several computers in your home or office but only one printer? (Err, yes, you could say that!. Ed) No problem. Just connect a printer to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme Base Station and the printer instantly becomes available to everyone on your wireless or wired network. (See system requirements.)
Share your hard drive
Now you can share an external USB hard drive over your wireless and wired network by simply connecting it to the USB port on your AirPort Extreme Base Station. Called AirPort Disk, it's perfect for sharing files, making backups, and more. You can even connect multiple drives and printers using a USB hub (sold separately). (See system requirements.)
I've got the printer covered - it is a MultiFunction Device with its own Ethernet port. But I love the idea of sharing a string of USB drives to the network - especially as I have just on 1TB of such storage hanging off the Mac Pro at the moment. I reckon that USB port on the AEB will prove to be quite useful.
Brickbats aside, I can recommend the Apple AirPort Extreme Base to anyone contemplating either a new WiFi router or who is specifically wanting to update to the current draft 802.11n standard.
This weekend it was the turn of the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEB) to become a new member of the household :) The reason being that I wanted to update to 802.11n for the benefit of the MacBook Pro and the
suitably equipped PC Laptops that the family members have. I can't believe it but 802.11G (54Mbps) is beginning to actually "feel" slow! When moving stuff between the MBP and the Mac desktops the limitations of 54Mbps become more apparent.
The AEB is used in a mixed Windows and OS X environment - and it was this requirement that was a driver to go down this route rather than use another brand. Although I'm sure that some of the other 802.11n routers may well meet or even exceed the design spec of the AEB - what I saw on the Apple Store website (http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=94023922&nplm=MB053) for the AEB did it for me.
The AEB is packaged in the ususal Apple sturdy and functional box. A software CD for Mac and PC is provided, as is the obligatory skinny manual that comes with all Apple product.
Easy wireless networking
Connect your DSL or cable modem to the AirPort Extreme Base Station, then quickly set it up with the easy-to-use AirPort Utility, which is available for both Mac OS X and Windows. Within minutes, you and up to 50 others can use your Macs or PCs to surf the web, stream video, share photos, and more — without wires.
Errr, not quite! Setting up the AEB in place of my Linksys WiFi cable router was not without some difficulty. Configuring the AEB requires some network nous, which is fair enough, and I have that in bucket loads. But the expected ease of setup was not quite there in this instance. There seems to be very little status information and so debugging a fault I occasioned proved difficult without something to go by. In the end it turned out to be that the cable modem needed to be power-reset to allow the new AEB to obtain a valid DHCP-issued IP address. I'm sure that a less-network-savvy individual would have been returning the AEB to the Apple Store within hours of purchase! It certainly required a bit of experience and guesswork to figure out what was going wrong.
However, having got the AEB up and running the rest has been a snip. I used the same WPA/PSK key as before - and all the existing wireless hosts were immediately able to get onto the network without further administration.
Up to 2.5 times faster4, twice the range
AirPort Extreme uses next-generation 802.11n wireless technology and features multiple antennas to deliver maximum speed and range throughout your home, classroom, or small office. You can enjoy up to 2.5 times faster data transfer speeds and more than twice the range of 802.11g wireless networks.
First impressions are that the AEB is very fast indeed - both the wired and wireless hosts communicate with the Internet with a noticable speed increase. Even the 802.11g/b equipment seems to be Internetting with a performance gain! Could it be that the Linksys had its own internal throughput issues? It was, after all, a first generation device which has been superceded several times to the latest version of the hardware.
The AEB is supposed to offer, like all 802.11n routers, a greater wireless range, some 2 times we are told. I am inclined to agree that the range is greater. I was able to get my MBP to work at the end of the back garden, some 41 metres from the rear wall of the house. The router is at the front of the house and so the signal has had to punch through three internal walls and one floor to get to where I was standing. Previously the Linksys would tail off in less than half the distance I was standing today. And the suggestion, from the MBPs signal strength meter, is that I could have gone even further away before signal loss became apparent.
Other impressions
Mains power to the AEB is via the usual bump-in-the-cable external transformer. In this case is is a rather dinky little Apple-white box mid-way along the Apple-white power cable. The mains cable is fairly lengthy, and the low-voltage cable is probably some 2Metres long!!! I didn't need that kind of length, but it is nice to have more than less.
Although the mains transformer runs fairly cool, the AEB is hot enough to keep your nighttime cocoa warm for hours (well, what else are you supposed to use the pancake-fat AEB for). Beer and wine would be ruined in minutes! What is it with Apple and thermal qualities?
Four 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports adorn the rear of the AEB - one of the ports is for the WAN to a cable modem (or ADSL modem for that matter). The remaining three ports are for whatever you like - I would have liked to see four terminal ports. As it was I had previously run out of ports and run a 4-port Netgear gigabit Ethernet switch behind the AEB. Its all good, it works very well and the additional Layer 2 hop is insignificant.
I like the AEB, I like it a lot - and not just because it is Apple. Aesthetically it is appealing to the eye, it also does not dominate the study, being of a discrete design. I do not like the administration software supplied - it lacks tools to help diagnose network issues and problems. By comparison the status page on the Linksys rocks.
Other Stuff
I have not even touched the two rather bonus features of the AEB - something I am sure that I'll have an interest in the future.
Print without wires
Have several computers in your home or office but only one printer? (Err, yes, you could say that!. Ed) No problem. Just connect a printer to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme Base Station and the printer instantly becomes available to everyone on your wireless or wired network. (See system requirements.)
Share your hard drive
Now you can share an external USB hard drive over your wireless and wired network by simply connecting it to the USB port on your AirPort Extreme Base Station. Called AirPort Disk, it's perfect for sharing files, making backups, and more. You can even connect multiple drives and printers using a USB hub (sold separately). (See system requirements.)
I've got the printer covered - it is a MultiFunction Device with its own Ethernet port. But I love the idea of sharing a string of USB drives to the network - especially as I have just on 1TB of such storage hanging off the Mac Pro at the moment. I reckon that USB port on the AEB will prove to be quite useful.
Brickbats aside, I can recommend the Apple AirPort Extreme Base to anyone contemplating either a new WiFi router or who is specifically wanting to update to the current draft 802.11n standard.