Do you turn off your airport when you aren't using it?

[burritos]

nm

[idkew]

when i am on battery- yes. My reason being that I hope the card is going to sleep.

[janey]

airport base or airport?

[lmalave]

Only if I'm going to use the ethernet instead (for faster file transfers or something)

[James.Paul]

All the time

[burritos]

nm

[morlium]

the base station is meant to be on at all times.

[burritos]

is there a problem with repeatedly unplugging it?

[lmalave]

Originally posted by burritos
is there a problem with repeatedly unplugging it?

Not really I guess but why would you want to? I don't think they consume that much power or anything...

[Gus]

My Base Station has been on for well over a year now-solid. There is nothing in the manual or anything that suggest that you need to turn it off. I think the fact that it doesn't have an off/on switch is evidence of the idea that it should just stay on.

My 2¢

Regards,
Gus

[bbarnhart]

I have the original graphite base station and it is exhibiting the capacitor problem, meaning that it resets itself every 10 mins or so. It resets itself every 5 seconds when the iBook is connected to another computer on my local network.

Time to get another one I guess.

[cubist]

Argh! Is that the symptom? I noticed mine doing that the other day. Annoying!

Supposedly it is easy to fix. You just unsolder and replace some 47uf/10v electrolytic capacitors.

Does it keep cooler if it is on its side instead of laying flat?

[JonD]

Lol, no... 24/7 for the airport baby. Without it, my dorm-room/suite wouldn't be complete.

[ryme4reson]

Is there a way to password protect the use of a base station. I know you can just automatically get on, buy can I protect it with a password? Thanks in advance.

James

[lmalave]

Originally posted by ryme4reson
Is there a way to password protect the use of a base station. I know you can just automatically get on, buy can I protect it with a password? Thanks in advance.

James

Absolutely. The Airport base stations have the best security for any wireless routers at their price. For wireless routers the most common way to password protect is with a "WEP" key (I think the letters stand for Wireless Encryption Protocol or something). All the key is is a password that users have to enter before they can join the network. I don't have an Airport Base Station (I use a D-Link router), so you'll have to read your documentation to find out how to use WEP keys.

Also, unless you want to share your network publicly, you should filter by MAC address (on your Airport Card it would be called the Airport ID). This way, you only let specific computers join you network. Again, you'll have to read you documentation to find out how to let only specific Airport IDs (or MAC addresses) join your network.

[ryme4reson]

Thanks for the info. The reason I am asking is a friend of mine is opening a coffee shop, and we are looking into ways to get internet access in the shop.

[janey]

Originally posted by lmalave
For wireless routers the most common way to password protect is with a "WEP" key (I think the letters stand for Wireless Encryption Protocol or something).
It's Wired Equivalent Privacy/Protection (note the use of the word 'equivalent') i believe and it basically means it'll prevent the average joe from getting in but useless because it's not that difficult to hack. You're better off not using a WEP key.
Oh and there's basically no way to prevent unauthorized use of a wireless network. So maybe you shouldn't try. Or maybe someone should come up with a more secure wireless network.

[lmalave]

Originally posted by übergeek

Oh and there's basically no way to prevent unauthorized use of a wireless network. So maybe you shouldn't try. Or maybe someone should come up with a more secure wireless network.

That's not true at all. There are much more advanced technologies than WEP. For example, AirPort base stations support 801.x security technologies like EAP (namely Cisco's LEAP security technology), and authorization by external RADIUS servers, etc. I don't quite understand all of it, but from what I gather the technology is definitely considered secure enough to deploy for situations where security is critical.