Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n
I decided that I wanted to pick up a G4 Mac Mini or something and build an OS X based router/access point out of it. It would have been a fun project, but I wasn’t going to drop more than about $250-$300 in the project total, and it just wasn’t possible.
I looked at the new Linksys WRT-350N, their flagship 802.11n wireless router and saw some bad reviews. I didn’t like that one of it’s most boasted features (the online storage feature, by which you connect a USB HDD and have it available to the network) was reported to work only sometimes. Yet, still, there was one other problem that I couldn’t put my finger on. This morning, Bryan was able to shed some light on the issue for me…
It appears that Linksys stole the design for the device from Robbie the Robot… Note for yourself:
It was suggested that I look at the new Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. Since they no longer look like a festering blister, I thought I would try one out.
The speed is very nice. I have an Apple TV and a MacBook Pro that are 802.11n capable (my little Mac Mini is just a tad too old, we’ll have to see what we can do about that later though). I was getting transfer speeds in excess of 130mbps depending on conditions on my hybrid n/g network. That exceeds my wired networking, so, rock on…
Configuration went well. I, at first, used the setup assistant, and achieved more than satisfactory results. I then reset the router to factory defaults and tried the manual configuration. It, too, went very smoothly. The only thing I don’t like about the configuration is that ANY update causes the AirPort to reboot…
I decided to see how well the online storage feature worked. I plugged in a 250gb USB HDD to the router, and arranged everything neatly in my closet. By the time I got back out to the living room, there was a pop-up on the MacBook Pro asking for the password to access the HDD. Pretty seamless. The HDD is a Seagate 7200.10 SATA in some sort of generic enclosure I bought for probably $15.00.
I have not tried printer sharing yet. Perhaps I will. I also need to try printer sharing with my AirPort Express.
Things I like:
- The shape, design, et cetera. The older styled roundy stuff that Apple came out with was pretty atrocious. Like I said, the old AirPort Extreme looked like a festering blister. The size appears to be about the same footprint of my mini, but half the height.
- The speed. Speaks for itself.
- The ease of setup. I think that the client (AirPort Utility) based setup goes smoother than an http based setup. It is less universal, but it seems to work. I am not sure if there is a Linux version of the client or not.
- Really long power cord and the power supply is NOT a wall wart. Wall wart power supplies are the bane of my existence. Okay, ONE of the banes of my existence.
- Simple, no BS packaging. I know this is not a big deal, but I really like the boxes apple stuff comes in. It’s not full of a bunch of stuff that doesn’t need to be there.
- Reliable. It works great with my PPPoE DSL service. It stays up, et cetera. More on this as time progresses though…
Things I don’t like:
- I think it should have at least one more ethernet port. This isn’t a really big deal to me though. I can always just add a switch.
- The ethernet ports should be gigabit. My main reasoning for this is that 802.11n can exceed 100mbps. I think it’s messed up that the wired portion of the network is the bottleneck. This, to me, is kind of like the 40gb hard drive on the Apple TV. It doesn’t really actually hurt me, at the moment, but makes me wonder sometimes…
- Does not have a VPN client internal to the router so that one can set up a full time VPN tunnel, preferably with split tunneling capability. Of course, nothing else in this price range features this either. It would be kind of nice, though.
All in all, I am happier with this device than I have ever been with any other of it’s kind.
Keep it up Apple. You may very well yet be the bitchmaker!
Oorah
-Head
