Filed under: Hardware, Airport, Internet Tools, Reviews
First Thoughts: AirPort Extreme Base Station
I picked up the new base station Wednesday night, which I set up to relieve our trusty AirPort Express from its duties in the living room (now we have 'tunes in the basement office! hooray!). Since it's only been a few days and I'm still waiting for UPS to bring me a bouncing baby external hard drive, I thought I would post some general first thoughts on the setup experience thus far. A more detailed report is pending, and I plan on writing up how-tos for wireless backups and using this setup for a wireless iTunes library. Until then, read after the jump for some general thoughts on my initial experience with Apple's slick new base station.
- Setup went *mostly* without a hitch. I opted not to use wireless security for now in lieu of hiding my SSID, since i still have a bad taste in my mouth from the hair-pulling reliability issues with wireless security I wrote about last November.
- Strangely, after getting everything set just right and rebooting the station for its initial use, the activity light kept blinking amber, which is the traditional sign that 'something's wrong.' A brief glance through the manual revealed nothing, though I admittedly could have simply missed it. Fortunately, I noticed the Summary screen on the AirPort Utility told me the amber blinking was due to an 'error' that I wasn't running any security. While I think this is a great way to help kick-start the general customer base into the idea of using security, I was a little annoyed since this traditional light blinking UI was more or less hijacked for something that isn't quite technically an error. Bad practice - sure. But not an 'error.' I think it would have been a better idea to provide some kind of dialog UI, warning me before the reboot that I hadn't set any security. On the off chance there actually is one of these dialogs and I was just an idiot for clicking through it, well... color me green. Or amber.
- Fortunately, clicking on the amber light that the Summary window displays will give you a screen detailing what any reported errors are. Opting not to be notified of any more 'no security' warnings and then restarting the router gave me a solid green light. Hooray.
- The new AirPort Utility software that replaces the AirPort Admin Utility is nice. Really nice. The UI is a welcome refresh, and while I've never owned more than one of Apple's AirPort devices before, I love the multi-device UI that allows me to see and admin the entire network.
- The AirPort Utility offered a great, plain language dialog containing two options for adding my AirPort Express to the network. The options were to simply add it so all machines could access it for things like printer sharing and AirTunes, or to actually extend the range of the network. Since 802.11n's supposed increased range should be more than enough for our townhouse, I kept it simple and opted for the former. Everything's been hunky dory so far, though your mileage may obviously vary.
- I *think* I've noticed an increase in general web speeds, though I haven't done any hardcore tests. For my follow-up how-to posts I'll do a more serious test, maybe shutting down the N station, hopping back on with mere 802.11b/g and running some speed tests. I'm also using Comcast in the Denver metro area, which I think is already pretty zippy at either 6 or 8 Mbps.
- Being able to search for options in the new Utility is awesome. I know a few things about a few things, but I'm no network admin and I don't remember where every option I want to tinker with is, let alone what each one is called. Search is most welcome for my moments of non-clarity.
- The new station is really sexy, and finally looks as though it belongs in Apple's lineup when compared alongside their other products. That old space station design was just starting to look downright kooky.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
HWH said 8:10PM on 2-24-2007
I had the *exact* same issue with the glowing amber light.
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alex rainert said 8:59PM on 2-24-2007
Did you by any chance set up ports for Bit Torrent? If so, I'd love to know what your settings are.
Thanks!
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Mitch Greenfield said 9:12PM on 2-24-2007
to setup bit torrent you just need to turn port forwarding on for ports 6881 - 6890 to the machine running BT
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Mat Lu said 9:29PM on 2-24-2007
I had a couple of non-Apple routers die on me while bittorrenting (and I didn't even do that much compared to some). Apparently most consumer routers can't handle the number of connections that bittorent often opens. Anybody have any idea about the reliability of Apple routers on this score?
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Rubbinz said 9:33PM on 2-24-2007
I'll skip this since it fails with Xbox 360's. Which is too bad, as it was looking to be the only thing Apple has revealed this year that I was even remotely interested in. I'll stick with my trusty Linksys and current 1TB NAS.
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Ryan said 11:01PM on 2-24-2007
I really cant wait to get my hands on one of these. This is the only way time machine will actually be used by me. I mean how many people have a hard drive hooked to their laptop all of the time.
I plan on streaming everything from my server,video, documents, ect. The base station could however use some gigabit ports.
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Jacob K said 11:18PM on 2-24-2007
I had th exact same scenario in my house - using an AP express with 2 MBs - one for me and my wife. We got the AP extreme to hook up two printers wirelessly and to use the Air Disk, which is working like a charm. I already had my iTunes Library on the external HD, which meant I only had access to it in my office, where the HD was. I didn't have to do anything special, once the HD was on the network, iTunes found it without me having to do anything, and I LOVE it. Now I have access to all my music anywhere.
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Thorn said 11:26PM on 2-24-2007
RE: torrenting and ports, if you have Azureus, you don't have to manually forward ports anymore with the new router.
Goto Azureus Preferences > Plugins > UPnP > NAT-PMP and enable it.
On the new Extreme, goto Internet > NAT and Enable NAT Port-Mapping Protocol
Now everytime you open Azureus, it should be able to open the appropriate ports on the Extreme as needed.
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ChillyWilly said 12:25AM on 2-25-2007
After a few weeks with mine, I love it. There's been a couple of times where my shared 250gb hdd goes missing. It simply won't take the password (I have it use the same one the router uses). Turning it on then off again resolves the issue. Don't think it's the router, but I won't be able to tell until I can hook another hard drive to it.
As for the blinking amber "error", I had the same issue. I have security turned off (I hide the SSID and use MAC address access list for both the AEBS and the Aiport Express).
All in all, the best $180 I've spent for my home network.
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avixe said 1:40AM on 2-25-2007
The Ars review says that operating in n/b/g mixed-mode drops the speed of the network to g speeds if any b/g clients are connected. Unless I'm misreading the article, I'd think that you're only getting g speeds if the Airport Express is always connected.
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jbelkin said 3:36AM on 2-25-2007
If you;'re so inclined, this is an Xbox workaround:
http://www.25experts.com/index.php?article_id=22
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Mabsey said 4:06AM on 2-25-2007
Can't see why you're noticing increased web speeds. While 802.11n gives you actual internal network transfer speeds of 50-100Mbps*, your ISP is your internet bottleneck, and you probably are not getting more from them than 12Mbps (most likely much lower than that).
* To get these speeds, you need to set the Airport to be transmitting at 5Ghz 802.11n only and have "wide channels" on. Anything else, will drop your internal transfer speeds down.
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Ender said 4:35AM on 2-25-2007
I hate to be a n00b, but since I'm on dial-up (and unfortunately will be for a while), is there any way at all to use this with a 56k connection? It'd be great to go wireless with my laptop, even if it is slow.
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Fred said 5:27AM on 2-25-2007
I have a big issue with my Airport Extreme setup with my other Airport Express base stations.
One of the Express base station was easily configured and joined the network without any glitches. but I have 2 other expresses and there is no way to make them join the network, it just won't work.
The setup goes smoothly but at the end, when it is restarting the express with the new setup, the light (on the express) is blinking amber... and I have a message saying that there was an error.
that happens with 2 express base stations. i tried reseting many times, nothing would do.
any idea of what I should do?
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Josh L said 5:49AM on 2-25-2007
Has anyone tested yet daisy chaining external hard drives? Or connecting many over a hub?
My Usb hard drive has a spot for me to plug another hard drive into, I might consider buying one if I could plug like 5 external hard drives into the thing. And having them all appear over the network, after permissions and etc.. are set up.
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Mabsey said 6:53AM on 2-25-2007
Point for ChiilyWilly (love the name, by the way!) - just a quick warning that you probably already know - if you're going to disable WPA on the AEBS you really are opening yourself up to potential trouble. SSID hiding and MAC Address Filtering do stop hackers because your SSID and approved MAC addresses are broadcast within your network's traffic. You do stop the casual neighbor logging onto you, but that's all.
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John Muir said 7:10AM on 2-25-2007
Re: Mat Lu
I've been torrenting on my Airport Express since 2004 and it's still soldiering on today. No problems at all.
Plus I have WEP2 for the network which I consider a *MUST* compared to WEP or no protection at all. Even though it is just a house network and 100% Mac now (at last!) I don't fancy giving anyone a target for whatever junk they want to get up to on a "borrowed" IP if you know what I mean.
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John Muir said 7:12AM on 2-25-2007
Make that WPA2 (personal) :P
And 50% of those Macs are Intel, albeit rock solid Mac Mini's. Great little trouble free machines.
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Peter Mankarious said 8:10AM on 2-25-2007
ScreenCastsOnline has a 30min video review of the feautres over at http://screencastsonline.com/sco/Shows/files/SCO0087-airportextreme.html
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niall said 8:34AM on 2-25-2007
Hi David,
Once you get your external hard disk, is there any chance you can try accessing your External Hard disk from outside your network - i.e. from a coffee shop or office? I just want to know if you can easily connect up to it, as I'd like to use one as a server for the times that I'm freelancing in other offices.
Cheers
Niall
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