Next Generation Airport.....

[d.f]

Am looking to network up my home and am about to buy an Airport Extreme Base Station.

Does anyone think that the next generation Airport will offer FireWire connections to enable a compatible External Hard Drive to be networked, and therefore dump data into it through the Airport Extreme....?

Better still, does it already do this...?

[James Philp]

Airport express has a USB port (but i don't know if it's 2.0 or not?) I think it's for printers however.
A good solution to this would be an old computer (or cheap one) that has all these drives attached, connected to the base-station (and running the network) if you can.

[kingcrowing]

if you have a server you can do that, but i really doubt the next airport will have a Hard Drive, you could buy like an old G3 (the B&W goes for around $50) and put a nice big HD in it and use that as a server...

But as far as the next gen of wireless goes, i've heard about something called 802.11N (N is for neiborhood) and i've heard that one station is big enough for all of NYC, don't know if this is true or how it's going to work, because then if one person pays for internet then everyone can have it, but that would be cool to be able to connect to your wireless connection from like school or work!

[d.f]

cheers james

Yes, that is what i was going to do, but it seemed a waste of energy (electricity) and space turning my old G3 iMac into a very expensive means to connect to an Extenal HD wirelessly.

essentially what i'm after is a wireless External HD. i'm surprised no-one has made one yet... (i may be wrong, but i can't find em). it seems the next logical step in the wireless home / office set -up...

[d.f]

if you have a server you can do that, but i really doubt the next airport will have a Hard Drive, you could buy like an old G3 (the B&W goes for around $50) and put a nice big HD in it and use that as a server...


thanks for your help. i may not have been clear. i know that future Airport Base Stations are unlikely to have thier own HD. but i wndered about the possibility a Firewire (400/800) port to allow them to be connected to an External HD, and therfore create a wireless Ex HD.

[cerfsud]

i'd imagine the next version of airport will be based on 802.11n*, though i've heard rumors that apple might release an updated airport extreme that uses their own proprietary flavor of 802.11g that operates at ~108Mbps like many other manufacturers already have. i highly doubt it'll have a firewire port.

as far as i know, the usb port on current airport expresses and airport extremes is for printer sharing only.


* the "n" in 802.11n does not stand for "neighborhood" and it definitely can't cover a whole city - i don't know what crazy friend (of a friend of a friend..) of yours made that up. 802.11n is supposed to have slightly better range than 802.11g and operate at at least 100Mbps. wikipedia has a little brief on 802.11n here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11#802.11n

[ipedro]

Sorry bro... no Firewire ports on the next AirPort Express.
You can read information about the next generation airport here (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=124495&page=1)

According to reliable sources it is already in production and will feature one new port in addition to Ethernet Port, Optical Audio and USB (for printer): S-Video.

Speculation on the name of the new airport is that it will be called: AirPort ExpressAV

There will be a new video/image streaming feature that will replace AirTunes.

Check out http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=124495&page=1
for further information and to post your comments.

[buryyourbrideau]

i havent ever seen a wireless external hd

i dont know how that would work, maybe BT file transfer?

it would be kinda cool to have one however so my desk doesnt get more cluttered than it already is

[R.Youden]

You can but ethernet based HD's which I imagine would fit into the ethernet socket of the AirPort. The only problem is they are, yes you guessed it, Windows only :( . It would be cool if the new AirPort was fast enough to stream DVD. I can do it at the moment but both the computers have to be next to each other! As Apple will HAVE to have the 802.11N cards fully compatible with the 802.11g. It annoyed me so much when the made the 802.11a and g non compatible in a computer!

[zach]

Well, a and g can't be compatible. It's not that someone MADE them incompatible, they simply operate on a different frequency, and they can't physically work together.

[PlaceofDis]

its not going to happen for a while yet, printing sure, easy to set up and what not, but connecting to an external harddrive is messy, permissions issues, who can read and write and what not, so until they come up with an easy way to set up and configure an external attached drive i dont see it happening too soon just yet sorry

[R.Youden]

What I was getting at was being able to fit an 802.11n card in a computer that currently takes 802.11g. I am sure that it is the card that selects the frequency in the same way the USB adaptor versions do.

[TheMasin9]

thanks for your help. i may not have been clear. i know that future Airport Base Stations are unlikely to have thier own HD. but i wndered about the possibility a Firewire (400/800) port to allow them to be connected to an External HD, and therfore create a wireless Ex HD.
For the 200$ you pay now they should have thier own hds NOW!

[ravenvii]

Adding to the 802.11n discussion... I don't know if it's specifically 802.11n or something else, but I know it's called WiMax, and yeah it's going to have enough range to cover manhattan. It's not for home applications, it's for the phone companies to utilitize and make basically a nationwide hotspot. It's gonna be sweet.

[cerfsud]

802.11n and WiMax are not related.

here's wikipedia's article on WiMax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMax

[ravenvii]

Thanks for that wiki link.

WiMAX is gonna be awesome... Forget the home internet applications, think about how you can turn your PDAs into a BlackBerry-like device... with full and fast web browsing and internet-based applications, anywhere anytime. And laptops! No more need for ultra-slow cell phone modems.

[steve_hill4]

Are there any plans for Apple releasing a usb/firewire/ethernet airport adaptor in the future though? We sell macs here at work and someone wanted to buy the better spec mini the other day and wanted airport. i explained that we couldn't do the customising, but did have a more expensive variation with it built in, but he was asking for something to perhaps plug in. I said no, but personally wondered if they will ever do one.