Filed under: Hardware, Airport
AirPort Extreme has AirPort Disk: USB hard drive sharing
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Wheels said 11:57PM on 1-10-2007
"Our own former C.K. Sample III...."
Did he change his identity?
Reply
Chris Holmes said 12:32AM on 1-11-2007
Given the form factor, should sit and work nicely with the various Mac mini external Hard Disk enclosures.
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RLH said 12:52AM on 1-11-2007
This feature is very exciting. It make me wonder about the USB port on the Apple TV-- what does *it* do?
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Monty said 1:03AM on 1-11-2007
The one downside to this router is that the network ports are only 10/100 and not gigabit. It is unfortunate that the 100mb port could be the bottleneck as it is slower than the 802.11n spec.
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Rob said 1:15AM on 1-11-2007
Hopefully this disk sharing utility will be able to be utilized by Time Machine when it's released.
Apple's currently bundled backup solution is extremely poor. It's bad enough that Backup! costs $99/yr, but it has some significant deficiencies to boot.
Time Machine to a remote disk would be some useful free functionality to have. I wonder if I could boot from an AirPort Disk though -- bare metal recovery (god forbid) would be nice.
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Florin said 1:37AM on 1-11-2007
Jan pointed to the USB port on the AppleTV. Apple's explanation about "service" is ridiculous, it's more probable that they have in the pipeline a number of other products based on the mini form factor, designed as flexible pieces in an integrated home theater - computer network environment. USB may very well be the choice for a very simple way to interconnect those pieces, without the mess of cables you use today. It looks like there is a piece missing, something like a "smart" storage device. Think about it, why Apple TV's storage is so meager?
Another way to look at it is as a strategy to encourage third parties to develop products based on the same form factor which will plug in with no hassle into the chain.
Guess in a couple of months it will be more clear.
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Todd Sieling said 2:32AM on 1-11-2007
Fun! I can imagine an always-on backup disc and media server to start with. That has lots of possibilities.
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stephen hawkyns said 3:44AM on 1-11-2007
For me the biggest problem is that it does not seem to support Power Over Ethernet. You can get a airport now that IS compatable with this standard so as much as I would love to buy one of these, it looks like I will be making some last minute purchases of the POE enable devices that are out now.
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Mephistophelian said 5:04AM on 1-11-2007
Ok here is what this thing should be.
It should be a wireless modem-router with USB hard drive sharing (basically as it is but with an inbuilt DSL modem and a phone line connection on the back).
Reply
Gandhi said 9:51AM on 1-11-2007
Okay, I have a question. I have a gen-1 Macbook, that obviously does not have 802.11n. If I have one of these new Airport extremes and pair it with the new Apple TV, and use my gen 1 Macbook, would all the wireless work over 802.11g, or would the Airport and Macbook use 802.11g, while the Apple TV and the Airport will use 802.11n?
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Diego said 10:22AM on 1-11-2007
Is the HDD-sharing plug-n-play or does one have to reformat the drive to some non-HFS+ system like with other NAS devices?
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icerabbit said 10:23AM on 1-11-2007
I was very excited about this until I saw it only has fast ethernet. It is 2007 - why not gigabit ethernet? Every mac has it.
I have 2 NAS drives on fast ethernet and they're too slow. Good for the occasional document, photo and stuff, but it can sustain a data rate to show a movie from it.
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Russ said 10:28AM on 1-11-2007
I use a Netgear router and it has a URL block list (e.g. it intercepts HTTP requests to URLs that contain strings found in the block list). I have configured it's URL block list (50 entries max) to block sites that provide banner ads (e.g. doubleclick) and spyware/tracking which gives me a nearly ad-free web experienct (that and Adblock in Firefox). Does anyone know if Apple routers offer a feature like this?
Russ
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bob wilson said 10:35AM on 1-11-2007
No Gigabit Ethernet. This means its crap to network all your new Macs that ALL have gigabit built in. What were they thinking? Dumb.
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icerabbit said 10:47AM on 1-11-2007
Above I obviously meant: it can't sustain a data rate.
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gobenho said 12:01PM on 1-11-2007
I really like the Printer Sharing/Harddrive Sharing possibilities on this router.
What sucks for me is that all of my external drives are FireWire.
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whoDean said 1:50PM on 1-11-2007
I assume you will need a machine with a 802.11n card into order to effectively use a hard drive attached to the AP Extreme via USB?...Will it take advantage of USB 2.0 speeds?
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Rob said 1:57PM on 1-11-2007
Here's something to think about on AppleTV.
Go to the product page. Notice something? "Select". Not "Add to Cart" like items in the store, but "Select", similar to items with multiple models or build-to-order options.
Prediction: There will be additional goodies for Apple TV in the near future (TV tuner perhaps?), or additional models (larger local disks for syncing).
Reply
Dan Woods said 7:02PM on 1-11-2007
Here's an idea for LaCie and all the other Mini-Form-Factor Enclosure Manufacturers; A Power Brick will Multiple Outputs.
The Apple TV doesn't use a Power Brick, but the new AirPort does, and so do all the AfterMarket Mini-Form_Factor HDD Enclosures. They also all have the same Voltage and Current requirements.
A Brick which accepts a standard Figure-8 Power lead, but has multiple outputs for HDDs and USB Hubs etc, and one output for the Airport Extreme would get rid of most of the Cable Clutter that a Multi-Unit Device generates.
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Scott Williams said 7:13PM on 1-11-2007
Bob wrote... "No Gigabit Ethernet. This means its crap to network all your new Macs that ALL have gigabit built in. What were they thinking? Dumb."
Ahem... it's a WIRELESS BASE STATION! There is no gigabit WiFi spec! Even if it HAD a gigabit ethernet port the 802.11n spec will still bottleneck at 100mbit. Someone needs to read some spec sheets. (Yes teh spec says 200mbit, but remember they count both Tx and Rx)
Also so what if all the Macs have 10/100/1000 ports... the airport card isn't gigabit... it's 54mbit. If you are gonna try and hook your 1000 wire into this device... go suck a light socket.
IT'S A WiFi BASE STATION!
These are the kinds of people that make my head hurt.
Also.. 100mbit WiFi? Awesome! More than enough for a home or small business LAN. If you need more than this... you need to invest in some Cisco gear. How can I say this? Simple. the form factor is the same as the Mini. This is clearly a home WiFi setup.
The average home at the most has a 10mbit broadband connection. Is 100mbit to your router not enough? Even if you had all CAT5E drops in your house and all your Macs were gigawired to you router... you will still bottleneck at your broadband modem... nuff said.
100mbit WiFi is a huge leap considering just a few short years ago all you could get was 11mbit. Remember those days?
The big pluses with this new Airport are:
802.11n (This should stream a 720p movie just fine)
NAS ability (use this for Apple TV instead of taxing my Mac)
Parental Controls (network access only during specified hours by MAC address... HUZZAH) Lock your kids off the LAN from say 11PM-6AM... predator-free sleep for me.
All I'm saying is quit complaining about no gigabit ethernet port. Even if there was one, IT WOULDN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE! The 802.11n spec is only 100mbit genius.
Be patient. Your precious gigabit WiFi will be born in the not to distant future.
Peace.
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