Apple Airport Extreme Base Station Review

The Apple Airport Extreme Base Station or AEBS in short, as we prefer to call it, was recently released by Apple along with new iMacs and other upgrades. This version is an upgrade to the older AEBS that was release a year and half back. The AEBS has been designed especially for Mac users and they get to enjoy more features than their Windows counterparts.

Apple Airport Extreme Base Station specifications :

• Dimensions : 6.5″ x 6.5″ x 1.3″
• Weight : 1.7 lbs
• Antenna : Internal
• Connectivity : IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b,
  IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11n (draft)
• Transfer Protocol : L2TP, PPTP, IPSec, PPPoE
• Encryption :  TLS, WPA, LEAP, PEAP, TTLS, WPA2 ,
  40-bit WEP, 128-bit WEP
• Interface : Hi-Speed USB, Ethernet, RJ-45
• Power adapter : External
• Other features :  NAT support, DHCP support, IPv6 support,
  MIMO technology, VPN passthrough, Firewall protection, MAC address filtering
• Approx. price : $179

The design of the AEBS has been kept unchanged for good as it has a simple, clean and elegant design. All the ports are located at the back. The front just has an LED that displays the status. The shape of the AEBS is perfectly square and the antenna is housed inside the router itself.

The router has a USB port to connect a printer or an external hard drive to the network. It also has three Ethernet ports to add wired devices to the router. To add more wired devices you will need to connect a hub. The setup of the device is not supported via the web interface. Apple ships the AirPort Utility software in both Mac and Windows versions separately. After install, Airport Base Station agent helps you set up the device and it automatically detects the shared folders on the connected USB drive, if any.

Moving around the router among computers isn’t easy as configuring it requires you to install the Airport Utility software on each of them. But using the utility is extremely easy and wizard guides you through the whole process in no time to get it up and running. Any changes made to the settings requires a restart, hence interrupting connectivity for a while. The router supports 50 client computers at a time, so if you need to connect above that number, you need to look elsewhere.

Features are limited on the AEBS and it does not offer features seen on other high-end Wireless-N routers. Some of these include, website filters, Wi-Fi protected setup push button, Dynamic DNS or even Mac replication. Although, not very useful in a home set up, these become all the more useful when using the router in an organisation.

Some of the features that it does include are print serving capabilities, full support for IPv6 and also comes with MobileMe support for remote access and administration. But the biggest feature addition comes in the form of true dual-band connectivity and guest networking. The router can broadcast both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency networks simultaneously on the same SSID. A device supporting wireless-N protocol would automatically choose the faster network.If you wish to set different SSIDs for the bands, then it can be done through the Wireless Option in the Airport Utility. You can not however turn off a band completely.

Guest networking, the other big feature update to the AEBS allows you to create a separate network for devices wanting to connect only to the Internet but do want access to local resources. This can be useful in both home and office environments to grant only Internet access to few clients only but block access to important files on the network. Choosing a band for guest network to operate in is not possible though.

The print serving feature works good only for USB hard drives formatted in FAT32 format or Mac OS Extended format. NTFS isn’t supported which has become standard on large hard drives as FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB are difficult to make. For Mac users, when an external drive is connected, the default shared folder appears in the Finder. For Windows users, Bonjour needs to installed that creates a network drive to be accessed using network browser on other machines.

If you own a MobileMe account, you can access the hard drive flawlessly. You need to register the router to your MobileMe account and after that use it with ease. Remote access might not work when using a corporate network where certain services of the Base Station might be blocked. Windows users, do not get remote access whatsoever!

The hard drive is shared as a single folder but multiple folders with different access privileges can be shared across the network. Airport Utility can be used to create private folders for different users. Folders for different users are not visible to a user logged in with his account. This makes for a nice way to grant space on the hard drives to a bunch of users. The hard drive can be powered by the USB port itself.

Security features on the hard drive include a built-in firewall and support for WPA, WPA2 and 128-bit WEP algorithms. Filtering web sites is not possible but time-based access can be restricted by knowing the MAC addresses of the computers.

The performance is a strong point of the refreshed AEBS and it outscores a number of other routers. It manages a score of 75 Mbps in throughput test on 5 GHz band for client computer a few feet away from the router. The score declined to 50 Mbps when client was taken far way from the router. In the 2.4 GHz band, the numbers declined to 40 Mbps and 20 Mbps. The range of the router is great at above 300 feet for both the bands. Heat was however a problem and it does run hot and needs proper ventilation.

Pros :

• Elegant and simple design
• True-dual band capability
• Printer, storage support
• Fast performer
• Guest networking

Cons :

• Limited features
• NTFS partitions not supported
• No remote access for Windows users
• Upto 50 clients supported

Final Thoughts

The Apple Airport Extreme Base Station is basically meant for Mac users as it gives them full support. It does have limited features, so if you want a feature oriented router, then AEBS is not meant for you. Performance is great and true-dual connectivity along with guest networking are its strong points.

Rating : 3.75/5