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

Researching Airport Extreme Base Stations

A

Apocrathia

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
276
0
University of South Alabama
JasonR said:
Get a new ISP. I bought an Airport Express yesterday because my Linksys Router was having intermittent issues. So far so good. Easy setup (even with PPOE on the router via AT&T DSL), sharing printers/hard drives, Wireless N, dual band support, gigabit ethernet. Definitely future proofed.

I wasn't able to change the mac address on the router. Like I said, get a new ISP.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I have no way to get a new ISP at my apartment, otherwise I would have jumped on that like a fat kid on cake a long time ago. The cable, internet, and non-existent phone service is all done by one company. I'm pretty screwed with it. Therefore, I really require mac address spoofing.
I did a full 30/30/30 reset of my wrt610n and it seems to be behaving properly now. I'll keep an eye on it over the next few weeks and see what happens though. I wish dd-wrt for these models was more developed at this point.
 
A

Apocrathia

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
276
0
University of South Alabama
danny_w said:
I don't know if this is what you mean, but if the Drobo is attached to your Mac by USB, the Mac only needs to be running Leopard in order to share it as a TM drive, NOT Leopard Server. I would either partition the Drobo and use the first (fixed) partition for TM or use the DroboApps utility to limit the size of the TM backups from each client that you want to use.
Click to expand...

Okay, so how does that work? Do I still have to enable unsupported volumes? My current ubuntu server only has a few roles that can easily be setup with my mac mini:
bittorrent client
usenet client
mt-daapd
network storage
time machine backup
and a few scripts setup in the crontab to circumvent my terrible isp's crap. (they like to cut the internet every night and redirect you to a portal to get back online, it's just a way for them to make ad revenue. commie bastards)

would I just have to setup an afp share from my mac mini and then any computer could connect to it and backup on the share as a supported share?
i'm planning on having a single partition with two shares. i'd rather not worry about partitioning the drobo.
 
D

danny_w

macrumors 601
Mar 8, 2005
4,467
300
Cumming, GA
Apocrathia said:
Okay, so how does that work? Do I still have to enable unsupported volumes? My current ubuntu server only has a few roles that can easily be setup with my mac mini:
bittorrent client
usenet client
mt-daapd
network storage
time machine backup
and a few scripts setup in the crontab to circumvent my terrible isp's crap. (they like to cut the internet every night and redirect you to a portal to get back online, it's just a way for them to make ad revenue. commie bastards)

would I just have to setup an afp share from my mac mini and then any computer could connect to it and backup on the share as a supported share?
i'm planning on having a single partition with two shares. i'd rather not worry about partitioning the drobo.
Click to expand...
You need to be running Leopard on the Mac that has the Drobo attached to it, and share it via afp. Then both the directly attached Mac and any other Leopard Macs that attach via afp can use it as a Time Machine target (fully supported, no workarounds needed). The workaround that I mentioned is only needed to limit the amount of space that Time Machine will use on the target drive; by default Time Machine will use all available space; the way that it works it to put a size limit on the sparse image that TM creates, so that it doesn't grow beyond this point. You do not have to enable unsupported volumes like you would have to do with a NAS or DroboShare.
 
A

Apocrathia

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
276
0
University of South Alabama
danny_w said:
You need to be running Leopard on the Mac that has the Drobo attached to it, and share it via afp. Then both the directly attached Mac and any other Leopard Macs that attach via afp can use it as a Time Machine target (fully supported, no workarounds needed). The workaround that I mentioned is only needed to limit the amount of space that Time Machine will use on the target drive; by default Time Machine will use all available space; the way that it works it to put a size limit on the sparse image that TM creates, so that it doesn't grow beyond this point. You do not have to enable unsupported volumes like you would have to do with a NAS or DroboShare.
Click to expand...

That's great. As long as my router continues to function properly, i'll just get another tb drive and toss it in the drobo.
It looks like I'm just going to buy a drive instead of the time capsule then. saves me $400!
 
D

danny_w

macrumors 601
Mar 8, 2005
4,467
300
Cumming, GA
Apocrathia said:
That's great. As long as my router continues to function properly, i'll just get another tb drive and toss it in the drobo.
It looks like I'm just going to buy a drive instead of the time capsule then. saves me $400!
Click to expand...
I just tried it to double check. I have a Drobo attached via USB to my iMac (which run 10.5.6). I shared it (the whole drive) as an afp share. I then went to my wife's iMac (also running 10.5.6) and selected Change Disk under Time Machine Properties, and the Drobo showed up as a target. I didn't actually select it since I have a hdd on the AEBS that I use for her TM backups. If you want to limit the space that TM will use on the Drobo, then here is the link to the utility that I discussed:

http://www.drobo.com/droboapps/downloads/index.php?id=16
 
A

Apocrathia

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
276
0
University of South Alabama
danny_w said:
I just tried it to double check. I have a Drobo attached via USB to my iMac (which run 10.5.6). I shared it (the whole drive) as an afp share. I then went to my wife's iMac (also running 10.5.6) and selected Change Disk under Time Machine Properties, and the Drobo showed up as a target. I didn't actually select it since I have a hdd on the AEBS that I use for her TM backups. If you want to limit the space that TM will use on the Drobo, then here is the link to the utility that I discussed:

http://www.drobo.com/droboapps/downloads/index.php?id=16
Click to expand...

You didn't even have to mount the share or anything?
 
D

danny_w

macrumors 601
Mar 8, 2005
4,467
300
Cumming, GA
Apocrathia said:
jeez, i feel like an idiot now. that's what i get for being such a unix nerd. i have an automount bash script set to run every hour in my crontab to keep my shares mounted.
Click to expand...
Well, I wish I had a little of that unix nerd knowledge. I am gradually learning, since my job now is sustaining engineering on a product that is based on linux. As I get deeper into the development I learn new things that make it easier, but my primary development (mostly ui at the moment in php and perl) is done on the Mac. I have not yet quite gotten comfortable with the linux command line, vi, and shell scripts. What gets me the most I suppose is that utilities for even basic things are different between the different distros, or even different releases of the same distro. We are on CentOS 5.x now, and the utilities have changed quite a lot from the 3.4 release that we started on (and before that Red Hat 3.4)
 
A

Apocrathia

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
276
0
University of South Alabama
danny_w said:
Well, I wish I had a little of that unix nerd knowledge. I am gradually learning, since my job now is sustaining engineering on a product that is based on linux. As I get deeper into the development I learn new things that make it easier, but my primary development (mostly ui at the moment in php and perl) is done on the Mac. I have not yet quite gotten comfortable with the linux command line, vi, and shell scripts. What gets me the most I suppose is that utilities for even basic things are different between the different distros, or even different releases of the same distro. We are on CentOS 5.x now, and the utilities have changed quite a lot from the 3.4 release that we started on (and before that Red Hat 3.4)
Click to expand...

The complete independence between linux distributions is the reason i want to migrate my server roles off of the linux machine. I love unix, i grew up with it and i will use nothing else, but it can be quite annoying. People think one gnuapp is better than another so they include that in their distro and nothing else (nano > vi, imho). I like having my wrt610n because it is a linux based appliance and I can manage it very easily via ssh, however I was looking into the time capsule/airport extreme to migrate my time machine backups into one box. with the knowledge that i can use an afp share off of my mac mini as a supported backup, i'm sold on not getting either and just putting more space into the drobo.
I'm planning a big newegg order at the end of the month, which is when I'll be getting a new drobo (debating on a drobopro, lol), so I'm trying to do all the planning and research that i can between now and then.
 
D

danny_w

macrumors 601
Mar 8, 2005
4,467
300
Cumming, GA
fokket said:
The quality of them has not been as good as Extreme and I was part of the people that got f**ked over by Apple denying bad batch issue in 2004.

http://forum.hardmac.com/index.php?showtopic=167

Even after the 'fixing' they are not as great.


My Macs and Extremes have been solid though.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of that. How are the newest ones though? When did the latest version come out?
 
S

Scallywag

macrumors regular
Dec 21, 2007
121
0
NYC
I have the current model Air Port Extreme. It's worked flawlessly, and if you prefer not to tinker much with firmware, settings, whatever, then I imagine you'll like it. It's more than fast enough for my household, which runs three laptops and an iMac via ethernet, and an iPhone, all very actively used. The dual-band setup is very nice, and for someone like myself who prefers to plug it in and leave it alone, this is a very capable router that never makes its shortcoming (should there be any) known.
 
A

Apocrathia

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 6, 2009
276
0
University of South Alabama
unfortunately, without offerings of mac address cloning or any of the more advanced features I need, I'll be sticking with my wrt610n. It's pretty much the same specs as the airport extreme, so I'm not losing much. it seems to be behaving properly now after a full 30/30/30 reset. I might get an airport extreme in the future to use as a bridge/switch/wireless extender, but nothing more than that.
 
J

J&JPolangin

macrumors 68030
Jul 5, 2008
2,593
18
Close to a boarder, in Eu
Apocrathia said:
unfortunately, without offerings of mac address cloning or any of the more advanced features I need, I'll be sticking with my wrt610n. It's pretty much the same specs as the airport extreme, so I'm not losing much. it seems to be behaving properly now after a full 30/30/30 reset. I might get an airport extreme in the future to use as a bridge/switch/wireless extender, but nothing more than that.
Click to expand...

....your wrt610n only had dual band...the new AEBS is simultanious:D
 
G

Gustavo

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2007
26
0
Came from Linksys also...glad I did

I was in a similar situation...lots of problems as time went on with my Linksys router. I was constantly unplugging it and plugging it back in as the solution (just like my old PC). I bit the bullet and got an Airport Base Station on Ebay for $115 and it has been all good. Plus having the USB is an added bonus. I hear the Time Capsure is good too.
 
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