Apple AirPort Extreme

Introduction

The following showcases some of the best features, in my opinion, of the Airport Extreme in case you are in the market for upgrading your network.

Feature Highlights

• Supports 802.11n WiFi technology.
• Has one WAN port and three LAN ports.
• Has one USB port that can be used to connect a USB Hub, printer, or external hard drive.
• Plays nicely with the iPhone by easily switching from the EDGE network to your WiFi network upon detection.
• Compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.

Setup

Setup is a breeze as you only need to install the AirPort Utility software (discussed further below) and follow the wizard prompts. Afterwards you can enter manual mode to access the advanced features of your AirPort.

AirPort Utility

The AirPort Extreme comes with an easy to use software application called: AirPort Utility. Below is a screenshot of the application running on my Windows machine:

(click to view)

This application has all the advanced features necessary for setting up your wired and wireless network. For example: WEP, WPA, and WPA2 (personal and enterprise) security, port mapping, MAC address filtering, IP pass through, remote WAN access, etc. The thing I like the most is the ability to attach multiple USB devices to the AirPort. For example:

(click to view)

Notice, in the diagram above, that there is a USB hub which then has a USB printer and external hard drive attached to it. By keeping these devices connected to the AirPort it then becomes much easier for all computers on the network to access these devices 24/7 without requiring a dedicated computer to be always running and sharing the devices.

Tips & Notes

• A good USB hub to use with the AirPort is the D-Link 4-port USB 2.0 Hub. No software drivers required (if drivers are required then you are buying the wrong hardware).
• In order access a printer connected to the AirPort you will need software drivers that support Bonjour networking and are compatible with the various operating systems on your network.
• Bonjour networking not only allows you to easily connect to USB hard drives and printers but you can apply password projection on your hard drives and even allow remote access via the internet to your USB devices. Install the AirPort Disk Utility software on each machine to make this happen.
• It is a shame that the AirPort Extreme does not support the eSATA interface because USB 2.0 starts to suck when dealing with large amounts of data on the network.

4 Comments to Apple AirPort Extreme

1. 

   “The set up was a breeze?”

   Ummm, who was that man cursing at the new Mac Book and AirPort as he was having trouble transfering his files then? He sure looked a lot like you, except more red in the face that normal.
Kate Jonuska on October 16th, 2007
2. 

   Yep, I was cursing. However, it had nothing to do with the setup. It was due to a concurrency issue where I was copying large amounts of data and had some files locked on Windows that the Mac could not reach. It froze up my Mac for a while and that didn’t make me happy at the time.
Brooke Kuhlmann on October 16th, 2007
3. 

   Thanks for this post - this is helpful - quick question - so is it possible to have a USB hub connected with a external harddrive that can have several mac on the airport network use for time machines, AND a usb printer off the hub as well - that can be shared on the wireless network…. that would be pretty awesome!
Roger Peatling on October 4th, 2008
4. 

   Unfortunately, a USB drive connected to a USB hub which is then connected to the Airport Extreme is not recognizable to Time Machine (all of this is shown in the network diagram above). You have to have the USB drive directly connected to the computer running Time Machine in order for any of that to work.

   That said, you can connect a USB printer to a USB hub and then to the Airport Extreme and the printer can be easily seen by all other machines on the network (gets its own IP address, basically). Once connected, the printer can be seen via a wired or wireless connection.

   I agree with you, I wish Time Machine was more flexible in the scenario you describe.
Brooke Kuhlmann on October 8th, 2008

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.