Is Airport Extreme Base Station really that good?

[Chris F]

If you own a Mac with wireless N its your best choice by far. The built in OS configuration tool is well executed. Networking wise I have zero issues with my gigE AEBS. Works great even with the 7.2.1 firmware. I think I had to manually configure a NAT port for Azureus but thats about it. If you are even moderately networking savvy you will have zero issues with it.

The big issues seem to be with the 'addon' type stuff in the disk and printer support. My experience at least is that AirDisk works perfect using a Lacie Porsche enclosure with a 500GB Seagate drive. I think the enclosure model/drive is a big factor so YMMV with this feature. Also on the downside is that AirDisk transfer rates are limited by the speed of the AEBS CPU. You will never see more then 9MB/s or so read or 4.5MB/s write no matter what connection method you use. Still this is pretty good and more then enough for archival use.

As stated lack of a real firewall and logging is a bit annoying however OSX Leopard has a very nice inbound firewall built in and you can (and should!) use Little Snitch to monitor your outbound so the primary issue is not so bad.

 

[numbersyx]

Best router I've used (my 4th). I also use the print server function and it's as if the printer is attached to my Mac. I had attempted several methods to get network printing. All failed. This did the job in seconds. Very impressed with it and the range is amazing.

 

[agore]

BTW - Is there anyway to make a device show up like an AirDisk, but not hosted from the AEBS? I'm currently hosting shares from a windows machine, but mappings don't persist through sleep cycles. I real like the AirDisk interface and auto reconnection from my laptops.

Get an Ethernet-cnnectable hard disk and run it off one of the gigabit ports. This gives you better speed than the USB Airdisk, and the AEBS sees it as a device on the LAN, not as an Airdisk.

 

[dogtanian]

Wow, that sounds horrible, I'm considering buying one, purely to have a wireless disk, to use as a backup drive for time machine when lopard comes out. If it's that bad at writing over the network that makes it a non starter for me!

Sorry to rain on your parade but Apple has dropped all mention of Time machine being used in relation to Air Disk. It seems due to some issues, it's no longer supported. One of my favourite features for Leopard has now disappeared. I'm sure they'll sort it out eventually but when the hell is 'eventually'!?

I think Apple needs to make an official comment sooner or later as their staff still don't know if it works with it or not! I think it's an important feature to anyone with a macbook/macbook pro and AEBS.

 

[woodsea]

Follow-up
I hooked via USB to an Apple sold HP printer. That works great, but the software is not perfect, by far.
But, now my wireless is sucking big time. I am very disappointed. Even more now that an above poster says Leopard will not use an airdisk for the time program. Get on the ball Apple!!!

 

[Mpalmieri809]

Just a heads up but airdisk seems to be working much better and reliably on leopard than it was on tiger...

 

[flopticalcube]

Just a heads up but airdisk seems to be working much better and reliably on leopard than it was on tiger...

That is good to know. Very good. What issues did you have before?

 

[Mpalmieri809]

It always worked great for me until the update...then it would just disconnect at random times and provide me with really choppy video when I'd watch video off of it(my entire itunes is on a seagate 500gb). I always had to unplug the basestation and restart it.

Now video is not choppy. And I have not had a single drop all day. I am using my brand new MBP15 2.4 and my PB12 1.5 both installed with leopard....has worked flawlessly....I have my seagate plugged into a usb hub that plugs into the AEBS...I run my printer and drive off the hub....no issues at all.

 

[phuong]

hello. my AEBS came in today. on the box, it's written MB053LL/A model no.A1143.

originally, i bought it to replace my linksys G - which hasn't done anything wrong by the way. the main reason was that there are many people with wireless routers living around me, but none of them have N access, so i just thought if i moved to N, it would considerably drop the chance that some body sneak into my stuffs.

anyways, i got lazy and just plugged it into the linksys and set it up as a bridge. i also plug other stuffs in like Drobo disk and printer. then i used the airport utility to set it to emit wireless-N on the 5GHz range only, as the linksys already have wireless-G. (by the way can somebody tell me which range i should use, 5GHz or 2.4GHz)

in the end, my home networks isn't changed much. the only difference is that there is N-signals now, and the Drobo disk is not attached (to be shared) through a computer anymore, so every device can access it easily, including both PC and Mac computers, and a XBOX XBMC player.

the whole process of setting everything up took only a few hours. i haven't experienced anything people are talking about, like the random disconnect or crash or anything. oh and i use torrent too, but i guess that's irrelevant since the main datastream is handled by the linksys not the AEBS.

of course it's too soon for me to conclude anything, since i haven't updated to either 7.2.1 firmware (and i don't intend to) or Leopard OS so i don't really have the problems people are talking about (i.e., the incompatible with Time Machine etc)

hope this helps.

 

[Malfoy]

I've been using one for 2 weeks now and unless I'm missing some obvious things. I'd never buy one again. Where is my port forwarding and DHCP client lists?

 

[itickings]

I've been using one for 2 weeks now and unless I'm missing some obvious things. I'd never buy one again. Where is my port forwarding and DHCP client lists?

Airport Utility -> Advanced -> Port Mapping?
Airport Utility -> Advanced -> Logging & SNMP -> Logs and Statistics -> DHCP Clients?
Airport Utility -> Internet -> DHCP?

 

[BossHogg]

On my third wireless router over the years and the AEBS is the best and easiest to use by far. Have a Macbook and PC laptop with a printer on the USB port. Easy to setup and works like a charm. Love it.