Will An Airport Extreme Work?

[mynewromantica]

I am looking to get an Airport Extreme to connect a few hard drives to but I want to make sure that it will do exactly what I want. Here is what I need:

-Have multiple users connect to a drive at one time
-Share a Printer
-Use as a Time Machine back up disk
-Work with Windows
-Ability to set up port forwarding for games
-Have the drives accessible remotely

I know it already does some of these things for sure, but how well does it do them. And what are the realistic wireless speeds for the USB data?


Thanks

 

[RMo]

I share a printer on my AEBS and it works fabulously.

You can use AirDisk (disk sharing) on the AEBS, as well, and I would assume it works reasonably well, although I haven't personally tried. However, you cannot officially do Time Machine backups; there is a KB article (don't have the link handy) stating Apple does not support that setup, and I'd be hesitant to try something as important as backups on something you'd have to trick to get to even work in the first place.

Port forwarding is supported and is easy to configure with the AirPort Setup Utility. I use mine for SSH (which I then also use for VNC).

I can't comment on remote access of drives, as I have never tried that, either.

Hopefully this will get you started!

 

[RMo]

I should also mention Windows: both the wireless connection and the printer sharing worked well with Windows, although I had to do a Google search to find instructions for setting up the printer with the AEBS on Windows. (I think I ended up creating a local TCP/IP printer port with the address of the AEBS, said it was an "HP JetDirect" card, and then continued as normal setting up the printer using this port. There may be a more sensible way; I don't know, but this worked without having to install Bonjour or anything.)

 

[elhuynh]

Just a lil more specific on the OP's original question as I'm also currently considering getting a AirPort Extreme Base Station, I was wondering if it is possible to set up a external HDD connected to AEBS and have both a mac and a pc be able to read/write to the drive. I have read on other threads that you can format a drive as FAT32 to allow both a mac and pc to read/write to it if it is connected directly. But I'm curious if this needs to be done if the read/writes are happening via AEBS? Are the protocols pc and macs use to read/write to a network drive independent of the format of the drive?

 

[RMo]

Are the protocols pc and macs use to read/write to a network drive independent of the format of the drive?

The answer to this is a "yes," which should take care of your other question: I've never tried it, but as far as I know, Windows should work fine.

 

[dimab]

terrible performance

Just got an AEBS. Shared a FAT32 drive over it.
I'm talking about wired performance ---
From a WinXP 100MB NIC to AEBS drive I cannot copy any file larger than 1GB. Mapped as network drive. After several minutes of waiting before any copying starts, I hear the USB drive spin up, than explorer reports an error, and mapped drive is disconnected. Smaller files, upto 750MB, I get roughly 30Mbps, which I'm ok with.
MBP over 1GB wired connection writes smaller files fine. I have not had a chance to write 1GB+ files.
Odd stuff. hoping to figure out what the issue is with 1GB+ files.