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Airport Extreme Owners: Your opinion?

FF_productions

FF_productions

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Apr 16, 2005
2,822
0
Mt. Prospect, Illinois
My family is on the verge of ditching our Netgear router. I hate it, it drops out left and right.

I'm thinking of having them invest in an Airport Extreme and be able to back-up to a hard disk that is connected to it.

When Leopard comes around, it would be nice to have a back-up drive hooked up wirelessly.

So what is your opinion about the Airport? Good reception? Does it drop out the connection? I've heard the "Air-Disk" is really slow?
 
FF_productions said:
My family is on the verge of ditching our Netgear router. I hate it, it drops out left and right.

I'm thinking of having them invest in an Airport Extreme and be able to back-up to a hard disk that is connected to it.

When Leopard comes around, it would be nice to have a back-up drive hooked up wirelessly.

So what is your opinion about the Airport? Good reception? Does it drop out the connection? I've heard the "Air-Disk" is really slow?
Click to expand...

I usually find the Netgear hardware very good. I'm suprised you're getting dropouts. You may have already tried all the usual suspects, but have you gone through all the channels in an attempt to fix this? I found that I have to use 2 specific channels out of all available in order to avoid my neighbors crappy Dlink wireless.
 
I have the new gigabit AEBS patched up to the newest firmware with a USB harddrive plugged into it and don't have a single problem. All three of my computers, 1 iMac (Wired) & 2 XP (Wireless) machines can see it and use it.

I also have a Brother HL-1440 laser printer connected to it, zero problems with that as well...

I guess YMMV... :confused:
 
I had good luck with my Netgear WPN824 and my new Airport Extreme. Great range on both and never drops out.
 
Sorry I have no experience with a hard disk connected but my AirPort Extreme has been faultless so-far.

The Linksys it replaced had to be re-set every couple of days, the AirPort Extreme is just fit and forget.
 
I did run my Airport Extreme with a USB disk for maybe 2 weeks, but that got relegated to Time Machine, however, in that two weeks I had no issues saving files or otherwise.
 
Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Ive had the gigabit airport extreme for two weeks now and have a mybook 500 gig hd hooked up to it via usb...and have no problems accesing it from my imac or my two xp machines. It mounts just like any other network drive. :D
 
Use a good USB hub

I bought an AEBS because my Linksys router kept dumping my network connections. Overall network performance has be solid ever since.

I've got a WD Mybook and Epson All-in-one connected to a cheap USB 2.0 hub.

While the drive works well for transferring small files (mp3 songs and jpeg photos) transferring large video files results in a disconnect. I've been able to troubleshoot it to the point of the cheap hub. If the disk is connected directly to the AEBS, it works very well. I guess the throughput was too much for the USB hub.

If your printer is an all-in-one, you probably won't be able to use the advanced features when connected via Bonjour. My Epson RX700 has a built in scanner, and memory card reader that are only available if I connect directly to the printer via USB. Also the ink level is not detectable. In network mode I can only print. But it will print to the rear tray, front tray, and CD tray.

Anyone know a good USB router?
 
My AEBS has been nothing short of fantastic.

I've maybe had to reboot it 5 times since I bought it several months ago.

I'm sticking with the 7.1.1 firmware.. I had a few problems with the 7.2.1, so I rolled back and I've been happy ever since. (had some connection drops with the 7.2.1, they disappeared again once I reverted)

I run it in mixed mode b/g/n and my windows pc (netgear draft n card, WN311B), ps3, iphone and Wii connect without an issue and don't drop connection.

Don't own a mac yet, but this is definitely the best router I've owned.
 
I've had the AEBS since June. Overall I'm happy with it, but it is not without its flaws.

Range: Seems fine, I don't have a big house, and I have an APEX extending the network anyway, but haven't had any problems.

Internet: No problems, I have AT&T DSL. I haven't had any dropped connections.

Printer Sharing: No problems with a HPLJ 1200 (powered USB hub)

Airport disk: Working with a 500GB Lacie Porsche USB only drive (through a powered USB hub) This is a firmware issue that has not been fixed. This feature is not implemented properly yet. I can report with firmware version 7.1.1 that the disk works fine with the only caveat being the drive has to be powered on before the AEBS is powered on. Many drives do not spin down, and most that do, do not spin back up when accessed. Otherwise the airport disk has worked fine. 2-4MB/sec read/write over a 802.11g network. Slow, but manageable enough to use as an iTunes music server.

If you read on Apple discussion forums, many people have trouble with the newest firmware 7.2.1, myself included. When I switched back to 7.1.1 it works as long as I power the hard drive up first. Some have had some success with turning DHCP off or turning the lease time way up.

I don't think the read/write speed will get any faster. The processor on the AEBS, and most routers, is not powerful enough. If you need faster file serving, an old PC or mac mini would be best.

Other items: There is a space for Wide-Area Bonjour, but it does not work. In order to access your attached hard drive over the Internet, you need the IP address (or have a computer running a Dyndns client). Port forwarding is fine, although every setting you have to reboot the router.

It's an easy setup, a little pricey, but I'm happy with it
 
saxman said:
I've had the AEBS since June. Overall I'm happy with it, but it is not without its flaws.

Range: Seems fine, I don't have a big house, and I have an APEX extending the network anyway, but haven't had any problems.

Internet: No problems, I have AT&T DSL. I haven't had any dropped connections.

Printer Sharing: No problems with a HPLJ 1200 (powered USB hub)

Airport disk: Working with a 500GB Lacie Porsche USB only drive (through a powered USB hub) This is a firmware issue that has not been fixed. This feature is not implemented properly yet. I can report with firmware version 7.1.1 that the disk works fine with the only caveat being the drive has to be powered on before the AEBS is powered on. Many drives do not spin down, and most that do, do not spin back up when accessed. Otherwise the airport disk has worked fine. 2-4MB/sec read/write over a 802.11g network. Slow, but manageable enough to use as an iTunes music server.

If you read on Apple discussion forums, many people have trouble with the newest firmware 7.2.1, myself included. When I switched back to 7.1.1 it works as long as I power the hard drive up first. Some have had some success with turning DHCP off or turning the lease time way up.

I don't think the read/write speed will get any faster. The processor on the AEBS, and most routers, is not powerful enough. If you need faster file serving, an old PC or mac mini would be best.

Other items: There is a space for Wide-Area Bonjour, but it does not work. In order to access your attached hard drive over the Internet, you need the IP address (or have a computer running a Dyndns client). Port forwarding is fine, although every setting you have to reboot the router.

It's an easy setup, a little pricey, but I'm happy with it
Click to expand...

Those are some pretty major airdisk flaws that you somewhat gloss over though... it's advertised as one of the huge features and yet it is completely useless as it stands. I could handle slow speeds but the access denied bugs and spin-up problems that are especially prevalent in 7.2.1 make the thing a joke. It's so frustrating that no one at Apple will acknowledge the problem despite all the documented problems. If you point them in the direction of all the posts, they insist that there must be a configuration error. [le sigh]
 
waynergy said:
With the current firmware, the air disk is literally useless.
Click to expand...

Totally agree. Just spend days getting it working (I tried everything, several disks etc). At the best I had a drive mounted which dropped out after some time, and when it was working it was slooow. Printer also no luck: everything seems to be fine, but the print file never reached the printer (Epson). May be I'll try a different (HP) printer, but as a whole this USB feature "just doesn't work".
 
Well I guess some people have had success but it may depend on their setup or the external drive being used. It really does need to be noted, however, that there are literally dozens of posts that reflect the issues that the rest of us are having, so just be weary if you plan to use the AirDisk feature. I'm sure it will get fixed at some point in a firmware update, so if you can wait for the feature then just buy now and know it will be fixed eventually. I decided to keep my gigAEBS because I love everything else about it. Great speeds, no drop outs :)
 
i also bought the new aeBs gigabit edition, all patched up and with normal usuage the air disk is fine but for me becomes unreliable whenever you try to write alot of data to is in one go (ie mac backup).

the AEBS works flawlessy otherwise and i have no problems or dropouts, by far the best/most reliable router i have owned to date.


shame about the airdisk but as i have a nas it was only a bonus anyways.

im sure there fix it soon(ish)
 
The AEBS and Airdisk have given me zero problems. Maybe I'm lucky, but it's been running 24x7 since I got it about 3 months ago, and I haven't had a single problem accessing the drive from my iMac, Powerbook and Mini. The disk I'm using is a 250GB ATA drive I installed in a Coolmax CN550(?) enclosure. For interest I tried using an 8GB Thumbdrive but that didn't work at all.

Speed is not stellar, but my network is 100Mbps and so it's never going to be great. The speed is not noticably slower than when I had the Coolmax drive set up in it's NAS disk mode. I'd say it's quicker than the DLink NAS adapter I tried about 2-3 years ago
 
blodwyn said:
The AEBS and Airdisk have given me zero problems. Maybe I'm lucky, but it's been running 24x7 since I got it about 3 months ago, and I haven't had a single problem accessing the drive from my iMac, Powerbook and Mini. The disk I'm using is a 250GB ATA drive I installed in a Coolmax CN550(?) enclosure. For interest I tried using an 8GB Thumbdrive but that didn't work at all.

Speed is not stellar, but my network is 100Mbps and so it's never going to be great. The speed is not noticably slower than when I had the Coolmax drive set up in it's NAS disk mode. I'd say it's quicker than the DLink NAS adapter I tried about 2-3 years ago
Click to expand...

Well, as I noted, a lot of people seem to be having problems if they bought the new Gigabit version. That is where the problem first seemed to creep up. Before that I was using the non-gigE AEBS and it was great, airdisks included. The gigE version with 7.2.1 firmware is just not cutting it for some reason though.

Blodwyn, I'm assuming you formatted the 8GB to be HFS+ via your Mac directly first (stupid question, but just to verify) ?
 
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