arstechnica.com — Apple embraces draft 802.11n with its new AirPort Extreme Base Station. In addition to supporting Draft 802.11n, the new AirPort can share a USB hard drive over the network. Does Apple's first 802.11n WAP give more bang for the buck?
Feb 22, 2007 View in Crawl 4
neoisamuFeb 22, 2007
While I do like the sounds of this Router... I still have to wonder why they didn't use 10/100/1000 interfaces for the copper... especially since 802.11n can do 300mbps.
rudy23Feb 22, 2007
lack of apple articles = recycle old ones
brianez21Feb 22, 2007
The 300Mbit wireless throughput is "theoretical", FYI.And if you want a Gigabit switch you can go buy yourself a different router!
htdubFeb 22, 2007
If you look at the review's, the transfer speeds of "N" isn't saturating the 100bit connection. Most people who need a gigabit speed, will buy a seperate gigabit switch, it's better that way anyways.I'm very happy with my airport at my small ofice with 5 users (pc's and mac's) Air disk works well and printer sharing works on our 3 printers, only thing that bugs me, is that every change requires a reboot of the router.
daffyduckFeb 22, 2007
Have you heard about punctuation? It makes writing easier to understand.
Closed AccountFeb 23, 2007
I am sick of hearing about this thing like 802.11n is the second coming or something.Seriously guys - 802.11g is perfectly fine for most people unless you've got an exceptionally large garden or something.I don't see why anyone would buy this product over a much, much cheaper (and possibly much more reliable, tried and tested) product from Netgear or Linksys.
windwakerFeb 23, 2007
Wait, you can't share a USB hard drive over a network anyway? I haven't tried, but I don't see why you couldn't...
jerkFeb 23, 2007
You've obviously never owned an Apple wireless router. I've owned Linksys (b and the [in]famous WRT54g), SMC, Netgear (b and g), Zonet (I know), and Belkin routers. Besides the Netgear MR314 (taken early by a lightning strike), my Airport Extreme Base Station and Airport Express have been the most reliable routers I've owned. My WRT54G had connection issues (even after the DDWRT firmware) and then I got tired of resetting it in order to get a DHCP address, so I replaced it. I also have 2 other WRT54Gs, one version 4 and a version 6 that are dead. The version 4 just died two weeks ago, and the version 6 was a DOA unit that I bought for a friend about to return home from Afghanistan.
jccorMar 4, 2007
Hey...Just received the 802.11n base station. Got it for 2 reasons. First, wanted the apple tv (shipping delayed until mid march). Second, wanted to share a hard drive through the house. Yes, my primary computer is a Sony Vaio running windows XP SP2, and not an Apple. Probably my last PC. In any event, I have to make due with it for now, and I have a maxtor one touch II external usb hard drive, which I connected to the base station. Yet, it is not "recognized". The disk utility only notes that there is an "error" with the drive, which does not exist when I connect it via usb cable. Notably, the disk utility does not indicate what the error is or how to fix it. Does the base station only support fat32 and not nfts? Any ideas on why this "error" exists? Any help would be appreciated. Tx.
audiomicroSep 19, 2008
networking external hard drives to apple airport base station and time capsule is basically not possible. I have yet to meet anyone that could successfully do it. Apple products, for the most part, only work with apple machines. you can use it as a wireless router with a PC but not as a drive, although the documentation says otherwise
trasputinMay 17, 2009
This is hilarious "Apple products, for the most part, only work with apple machines."? I just set up Airport Extreme with a hub and attached shared printers and a hard drive (formatted in OS Extended Journaled format) and it works great on my cross platform airport network.The trick is that you have to use bonjour on your windows machines because Windows networking set up is so convoluted that you have to be able to think totally counterintuitively to figure it out. (I've been working with computers since 1977 so don't think I haven't tried).Load bonjour (available on apples website, free of course) and you will be up and running in minutes.