Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Airport Exteme to the max

steve217

steve217

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
As my daughters friends drop over to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, I am holed up in the upstairs bonus room watching the DHCP table begin to fill on my Airport Extreme.

What with all the kids iThings, my collection of laptops, desktops, printers, AppleTV's, Xbox, Playstation plus the virtual machines I'll launch in network bridge mode, I am curious, has anyone hit the 50 device limit on their Airport Extreme Timecapsule? I'm right around 20 devices at this moment.
 
I've gotten up to 123 devices at once on one 4th gen device. Didn't slow down too much and it worked just fine.
 
Intell said:
I've gotten up to 123 devices at once on one 4th gen device. Didn't slow down too much and it worked just fine.
Click to expand...

123? Then what's this mean?:
"Up to 50 people can all share the same Internet connection, exchange files using the file-sharing capability built into OS X or Windows,..."
​
 
Don't know. Maybe it's an artificial limitation Apple put into type. I do know that the older UFO shaped ones had that 50 person limitation. Maybe Apple never updated their specs.
 
steve217 said:
123? Then what's this mean?:
"Up to 50 people can all share the same Internet connection, exchange files using the file-sharing capability built into OS X or Windows,..."
​
Click to expand...

It is apple being conservative with their performance specs.

likely 50 people can run multiple applications at the same time all chewing bandwidth and the cpu in the airport will keep up.

if you have a bunch of people/devices doing nothing or very little, you could probably connect thousands of devices to it.
 
throAU said:
It is apple being conservative with their performance specs.

likely 50 people can run multiple applications at the same time all chewing bandwidth and the cpu in the airport will keep up.

if you have a bunch of people/devices doing nothing or very little, you could probably connect thousands of devices to it.
Click to expand...

You would run out of dhcp tables.
 
steve217 said:
123? Then what's this mean?:
"Up to 50 people can all share the same Internet connection, exchange files using the file-sharing capability built into OS X or Windows,..."
​
Click to expand...

They also say you literally can't use an external hard drive connected to an AEBS for Time Machine backups, yet I and a lot of other people are doing it...

The thing with Apple is that they never say "we don't support it, but it's possible", but rather "it can't be done". That way, they can't be blamed for if something they don't support goes to hell and having to explain that "no, we said that it can be done, but we also said that we don't support it". It's easier to just say it can't be done and then shrug your shoulders to anyone complaining.
 
throAU said:
It is apple being conservative with their performance specs.

likely 50 people can run multiple applications at the same time all chewing bandwidth and the cpu in the airport will keep up.

if you have a bunch of people/devices doing nothing or very little, you could probably connect thousands of devices to it.
Click to expand...

Well, now I'm curious .. have any of you Airport Express users bumped up against a 10 device/user limit, or any kind of limit for that matter?
 
I have an N Express. It's seen up to 12 people at once on it. Things started getting a little slow with the wireless throughput. My guess, it only has one antenna to use where the Extreme has three. The less powerful CPU probably has something to do with it as well.
 
hafr said:
They also say you literally can't use an external hard drive connected to an AEBS for Time Machine backups, yet I and a lot of other people are doing it...

The thing with Apple is that they never say "we don't support it, but it's possible", but rather "it can't be done". That way, they can't be blamed for if something they don't support goes to hell and having to explain that "no, we said that it can be done, but we also said that we don't support it". It's easier to just say it can't be done and then shrug your shoulders to anyone complaining.
Click to expand...

for not supporting it their advertising is certainly suggestive
http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/features/harddrivesharing.html (look at pic w/ airdisk hard drive)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back