Customer Reviews

Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station MB053LL/A [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(112)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I own an iMac G5, a Nintendo Wii, an Airport Express, a Nintendo DS, a HP Printer, and an XBox 360, and this thing works flawlessly with all of them. I can't speak for Windows based PC's, but the Airport Extreme was a breeze to setup on the Mac. The new Airport layout does most of the work for you and all you have to do is click when it tells you to. So simple a caveman could...well, you know.

*One note: If you install it, it says its working, but you're still not on the internet, then restart your cable provider's box and when it comes back on you'll be up and running. This didn't happen to me, but it did happen to a friend of mine. Just thought I'd pass the word.

I have been using many wireless routers (Linksys, D-Link, SMC, Netgear, Siemens...) over the years, since the early days of 802.11b, but this is my first experience with an Apple router (second, really: I've just replaced my first generation Airport Extreme router with this one which has a Gigabit switch instead of the original 100BT, so this is an update of the review I posted for the original model)

There is no need to comment on the manufacturing quality, design and packaging: in typical Apple fashion, they're miles ahead of the competition. For instance, unlike all the other routers I ever used that came with a 110v only power supply, the Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS for short) comes with a universal worldwide power supply equipped with a standard power cord.

Performancewise, it is exceptional. I have been putting it through its paces over the past few days and it's barely breaking a sweat in situations where my previous routers (Linksys WRT54G and Netgear WGN824) would progressively get slower, or just plain crash and require a reboot. Coverage is excellent, better than my WGN824's which was already quite impressive.

Apple has traditionally be doing things differently, and it shows here again: unlike most routers, which are managed by accessing a built-in web server, this router can only be configured using the "Airport Utility" configuration program. The bundled CD contains a Mac OS X and a Windows version of the utility (I can already hear groans from the Linux geeks). The utility is extremely simple to use, although I haven't tried to use the more advanced features such as setting up another router like the Airport Express as a range extender.

One problem you might run into is the lack of support for "legacy" devices: although the AEBS offers a compatibility mode with WEP devices called "WEP (Transitional)" which lets WEP and WPA coexist, this mode imposes restrictions on the keys that may not work for you (for instance you won't be able to reuse an existing 40-bit WEP key). The problem is that WEP-40 and WEP-128 are not compatible with the 802.11n standard, so you have to choose between speed or full backwards compatibility. Also, you should know that WEP-40 and WEP-128 are not very secure: there are utilities out there that can crack these keys easily.

Note that 802.11n gives a significant speed boost to the AppleTV and laptops equipped with compatible cards (such as Apple's Core 2 Duo laptops with the 802.11n enabler installed -- you can find the enabler on the AEBS CD). Unless you own one of these machines, there is no harm in switching to a non-802.11n radio mode. How? Just hold the command key (or control on Windows) while clicking on the "Radio Mode" popup in the Wireless tab of the AEBS configuration utility. Extra, non-n modes appear in the list, and once one is selected the WEP-40 and WEP-128 modes become available under Security. If you select WEP-40 or WEP-128 security, you can enter a hex key by prefixing it with a dollar sign.

The AEBS also comes with a versatile USB port, which can be used to attach hard disks and/or a printer (USB hubs are supported). Unlike other base stations or NAS boxes, the AEBS does not require that you reformat the disk; all you have to do is plug it in and voilà! Instant NAS, all your files show up on the network. Some very basic access control features are provided. I plugged in the external USB drive I use to backup my MacBook, and now I can do automated backups without having to worry about remembering to plug in the drive: it just works wirelessly. The AEBS also lets you share a USB printer.

Now that Apple has released the Time Capsule devices, they've also released a version of firmware (7.3.1) that supports Time Machine in similar fashion. Unfortunately some people complain that this feature does not work reliably for them. I've experienced a more annoying problem: the Nortel Contivity VPN software I use to connect to my office network no longer works reliably. I found out on Apple's forums that this is a fairly common complaint and a known problem, so I assume it will be fixed in the next release; reverting firmware to version 7.2.1 fixed the problem (and disabled Time Machine support).

In conclusion, this router is a fantastic performer. Although it's one of the most expensive 802.11n routers out there, its feature set, build quality, performance and top-notch customer support more than make up for the price difference. Despite a couple of quirks, I recommend it highly -- although if you need Time Machine support you're better off buying Time Capsule at least until Apple addresses the problems in firmware 7.3.1.

EDIT - Firmware 7.3.2 was released on 6/30/2008, and I have had no problems using the Nortel Contivity VPN since installing it.

First, I have to comment about another reviewers statement that the Airport doesnt work with XP SP2. I set it up wirelessly for my wifes Dell that has XP SP2 on it and have no problems whatsoever. The setup was simple and as with most Apple products it walks you through the process and I had her computer up and running within 10 minutes. If you need to share a (PC) printer through the Airport, it includes Bonjour software which will walk you through the set up process for a pc and in an additional 10 minutes she was printing from the Airport as well. If you have a Mac it's even simpler. The data throughput is exceptional and I have never had a problem with a sluggish connection. The range is also pretty impressive as my wife will sometimes go out on the deck (the Airport is on the second floor on the opposite side of the house) and has never had a problem. I recently switched to this router after using a another "n" router and had quite a few problems with it. The Airport is the type of device that Microsoft has never mastered...a true plug and play device.

Over the past 8 years, I've used the Linksys WRT54G, a Belkin wireless G, and a D-Link DI-524 wireless G. None of these products ever broke down on me, but they all suffered a weakness: the occasional dropped connection and requirement to a hard reset (i.e. unplug and restart). In fairness, each of these routers was $20 - $50, and so the savings over the Apple router was substantial (and ignoring the fact that they are all wireless G vs. Apple's wireless N).

Here's the verdict on the Apple Airport Extreme router. In almost 45 days of continuous use, it has not dropped a connection or ever required a restart in any way. To me, that's worth spending extra money.

I have a fairly complex network:
Cable modem >> Apple Airport Extreme >>...
1. Gigabit port 1 connects to SMC Gigabit 8-port switch, which connects 5 other devices around the house via Ethernet
2. Gigabit port 2 connects to a Vonage Motorola VOIP router.
3. Gigabit port 3 connects to a TivoHD

The wireless router is serving an HP laptop and a Tivo series 2 (both using WPA encryption).

The USB port is serving an HP LaserJet 6L, which has a parallel-to-USB cable. The Apple Bonjour software made this printer a breeze to install. Multiple computers (Windows XP and Apple) now print to this printer.

I also have 2 airport express units (wireless G models) connected to the wireless network to serve iTunes music to other parts of the house.

The setup and configuration of this unit is superior to the Linksys, Belkin, and D-Link. The only minus is that I cannot seem to find a DHCP table that shows me all devices connected to the network (and corresponding IP address).

Apple can tell you a lot of good reasons to buy almost any of its products. I should know because I have bought an awful lot of them.

But I did not "get" why I might want Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Gigabit) MB053LL/A. It is true the base station was adopted for the new 802.11n draft standard, but my two Macs predate the introduction of either the standard (which is still in draft) and the base station. So I figured to take advantage of the extreme speed increase 802.11n offered over 802.11g, I would need at a minimum a new air card, adding significantly to the cost.

I even stood around the Apple Store staring at the box for the Airport Extreme trying to figure out why I might want to spend a significant amount of money for a base station whose capabilities required even more money to be spent. So I didn't get it.

At home I continued to ask myself that question, and then in a MacWorld blog I found the answer. I wasn't even sure I had the right information so I called Apple and the product specialist had to look it up to confirm it.

OK so what should Apple have told us right off the bat? It is this:

ALMOST ALL INTEL-BASED CORE DUO iMAC, MACBOOK, AND MACBOOK PRO MODELS ARE PRECONFIGURED FOR 802.11n.

The software for the base station includes unlocking software for you Mac. Install the software after you have plugged in the base and you will fly. This base station allows for very high-speed wireless connections.

So why is this product worth $179 when you have a perfectly good 802.11g router running your system? That is sort of like asking why you might want a Ferrari to replace your Ford Focus. Speed, speed, speed.

First off don't be put off by the price, you can get this used from Apple for only $150 (full warranty) or even less on resale sites. The main advantages of this router are steady (but not super spectacular) speed, rock steady performance, and the incredible ability to mount MAC formatted HFS+ disks and FAT 32 disks with USB connections and any usb printer so that all your computers can read/write/print to them (I don't run linux so can't vouch for that OS.)

I recently upgraded both the PC's (two thinkpads with gigabit wired/ABG wireless and a WMC box I built myself) with our nest of Macs (three minis, G4, G5, ipod touch, ibook) and successively worked my way up from our old Linksys GS up to two new linksys N routers (110 and 310) and the Dlink DIR-655) Never though to look at the Airport since its 50% more expensive than the others. However I wanted gigabit ethernet and needed to access two specific DNS routers for our company VPN. The only one that would do this was the Dlink, (the VPN feature is flaky on the new Linksys models) but none of them had a network USB port so I tried the apple on a whim and am glad I did. Its not as easy to set-up with its arcane menus but it does have an utility that works fine with either PC's or Macs that are hardwired to the router, and it easy to save the settings even if its difficult to find them, thank Heaven for the user groups!
Anyway I have an old HP laser printer and two USB dirves hooked up to this, one was the dedicated backup for the G5, and much to my surprise I can see and print/access all of them from our thinkpads. That right there is more than worth the price difference. As for raw speed the D-Link seems faster on our mixed G/N network though the signal strength from the Airport is stronger a few rooms away than any of the others. Interesting in that the apple seems to have a setting that affects the speed it downloads video files so they don't timeout on buffering. All the other routers would hiccup when I was looking at CNN, film trailers, or other internet news feeds, but not the airport - its sweet and stable and makes watching all those video clips way too easy.
There are a few cons, being an apple product it integrates flawlessly with the Apple hardware, but since my laptops are company secured we can't run bonjour so we had to hardwire access to the disk drives and printers (again thanks to Google and user groups) And it takes a while to handshake with one of our laptops running WPA2 security, but doesn't drop it once it locks on.
If you didn't care for the port options and were only running PC's I think the DLink would be the better choice, its under $100 now and work well in mixed mode like we have and kicks at pure N. The linksys 310 was and okay contender, but wouldn't keep the VPN settings which I need to access our company servers, and it runs pretty hot.

I purchased one of these recently because I like Apple quality, ease of use and wanted to replace my Belkin 802.11G standard wireless router to take advantage of my new Apple iMac 2.8 MHz system with built in pre-N wireless.

Setup was very easy and Apple does a great job of walking you through the necessary screens to get the system set up and running. Even my Sony PC laptop was easy to set up. Score one for Apple. The range is better than my existing Belkin and throughput is at least a blistering 130 Mbps which makes downloads of big files *almost* fun.

I purchased a Seagate 750 MB USB external drive to backup the system and do it remotely through the AirPort's USB port. Hooking up the drive is a bit more complicated - need to use the Apple Airport Disk Utility but again it worked well. Then the wheels started coming off. The Seagate is formatted in NTFS and Apple needs either HTFS (Mac) or FAT 32 (PC) to work properly. I hooked the Seagate up to the back of the iMac directly and reformatted the Seagate in HTFS journaled to optimize compatibility with the iMac. Easy enough, then I hooked the drive into the back of the Airport and communication with the drive wirelessly was great. Next I turned on the backup "Time Machine" in Leopard. The drive was not recognized by Time Machine. I plugged it directly into a USB port in the back of the iMac and life was good - everything worked. Did some Googling and found out that the Time Machine backup program does not work with Airport drives. Bummer - minus one for Apple. Speculation is that Apple will provide a firmware update for Airport that allows it to communicate with Time Machine but as of now it does not.

On the plus side, I was able to daisy chain two Seagates on the back of the Airport - the aforementioned HTFS drive and a companion FAT 32 drive. Both show up fine under Leopard and the FAT 32 shows up under Bootcamped Vista.

In summary, I am happy with the Airport Extreme Base Station as it exceeds all of my expectations with the exception of the incompatibility with Leopard's Time Machine.

March 20, 2008 update. Apple did come through with a software update for Leopard and a firmware update for the AES which does allow backups from Time Machine directly to a USB hard drive attached to the back of the AES. After installing the software and firmware you will probably want to reboot your system and verify that the hard drive is recognized by Time Machine. The first backup took almost 8 hours - just like the initial backup when connected directly to the computer USB port - but subsequent automatic backups are pretty quick. I'm happier now!

I use this router to connect to the internet wirelessly with both my new MacBook and my 4-year old IBM Thinkpad T40(for which I need backward compatibility for 11g), and through an ethernet cable with my desktop pc. All three computers share the same printer.

I gave this unit 5 stars even though setup was a nightmare because I don't think it was the fault of the unit. My internet provider is Comcast, and for whatever reasons the base station was not recognized until I plugged the ethernet cable from my cable modem directly into my MacBook. I then had to unplug and restart the cable modem several times before the Airport Extreme finally picked up the correct IP address, DNS Server info etc. Finally, I had to go into manual setup and change to a specific channel number rather than obtaining a channel automatically because I was getting interference. I wound up with level 2 Apple tech support to walk me through all of this.

In retrospect, I think that I should have initially unplugged my existing wireless router (even though it was no longer connected to my cable modem) and also unplugged both the power cord and phone cord to my cordless 2.4 phone, as I ultimately did, since these may have contributed to my setup problem, though I am not sure.

Once the unit was setup, it worked great. Even though I cannot take advantage of the highest speed because I need bacwards compatibility for my PC laptop, there is still a noticeable improvement in wireless range.

As for the printer setup, I also needed some help from Apple tech support. I discovered that if you are using Bonjour on a PC, you need to download the sofware from Apple's site because that download for some reason contains components that are not available in the software on the CD that comes with the unit. Once I downloaded from the Apple site, everything worked fine.

Apple tech support is very helpful, so don't hesitate to call them.

The unit has a nice appearance, and unlike my previous router, has no antenna sticking up. In addition, it was a breeze to set up a secure wireless connection on my MacBook, and with only minor configuration I was able to do the same on both my laptop and Palm T/X.

Once I got past the setup problems, which I don't necessarily blame on the unit, it was a pleasure to use it and I am happy with my purchase.

Update March 22, 2009: I recently switched from Comcast to Verizon Fios, which requires using their wireless G router, which works fine for my PCs. However, I wanted to use my Airport Extreme for my Macbook to get the benefit of the wireless N protocol. I just plugged my Airport Extreme into the Verizon router and created a second wireless network. It was not too difficult, though I did have to call Apple Tech support to figure something out.

Update January 5, 2010: I am still using this router and it has worked without any problems. I like that when an update for the router software is available, the router will flash amber, and when everything is up to date, it stays a solid green. The solid green also indicates that the router is working without any problems, since it will flash amber if anything is wrong (and not just indicating the need for a software update.)

The overall performance of the Airport has been amply discussed. I'd like to comment more on my experience with AirPort's USB support on Windows XP. Specifically, what to expect if you attach a USB hard drive.

Installation was a bit quirky, at times the AirPort utility prog failed to recognize the unit. The Printer Wizard setup also installs the Bonjour program, a startup service required for an attached USB printer to be recognized across the network. It's a snap to setup the printer- Bonjour immediately saw my HP printer and set it up. However, all PCs on the network need Bonjour service installation in order to see and use the printer (at least that's what I did to finally get it going). Running memory usage is about 4k. This is annoying for those who maintain the startup list as lean as possible. The AirPort utility also automatically loads but I disabled it without problems.

Once things are up an running printer function is flawless.

Now concerning the hard drive on USB. First, it MUST be formatted to FAT32. To do this the drive has to be connected to the PC, not the AirPort. Depending on your needs FAT will be a problem. For XP users, formatting the drive to FAT32 is a headache since this function is hit or miss within XP, and most USB drives come NTFS preformatted which the AirPort will not recognize. Unless you are moderately computer savy it's a frustrating experience. In my case, the XP Disc Management utility did not list FAT32 as a formatting option so I had to search elsewhere.

NExt you can search and download freeware to do the formatting within XP. The most recommended program crashed on several of my PCs so I was unable to test it. There's also a DOS freeeware prog which does a good job (tested), but it's command line and may be complicated for some folks and takes a little Googling to find it.

Using an original Windows boot disk also works but is a major hassle. Furthermore, some Windows versions do not support FAT. Some drives come with installation CD and give formatting options.

Finally, you can format to FAT by attaching the drive to a MAC or Linux computer. I have a Ubuntu partition so that's what I did.

Now this is important: FAT32 limits file size to 4GB max. No way to get around it AFAIK. Do not expect to store files >4Gigs and access them on the network, for example large media files. I found the transfer speed to the drive extremely slow though I don't have numbers. You have options as to security of access, such as password protection.

In my case, the purpose of the drive was to transfer media files and use them on a Sony PS3. Since the PS3 also limits file size to 4GB that's fine by me. But if I wanted to access larger size mediaI I'd be out of luck. I hate streaming to PS3 so having a portable drive \from which to run media is best for my needs. I suppose most people store files way below 4GB so it won't matter. However, these days >4 GB media files are not uncommon, especially for those familiar with MKV containers. So if you're looking to stream a large .mkv file look elsewhere.

You can also attach a small hub so as to use several USB devices, such as multiple printer or drive combinations.

The reason I give this 3 STARS is that Apple is not upfront regarding the required FAT32 format for USB drives. Sure, the small print mentions it, but the inherent limitations of this format are not thus fooling unsuspecting buyers. I love it as a router and for printer networking. Lousy if you attach a hard drive and expect to store large files.

ADDENDUM: I originally used an external powered HD attached. I have since changed to the small footprint Seagate Go series HD (500GB) which is entirely USB powered and this works fine. Nowhere on the help files or on Apple site is there mention of "self" (USB) vs. external power requirement for attached HD but I encountered no problems with either. However, attaching multiple USB powered only drives potentially may not work.

I also use a USB hub to access both the HD and a printer. This is a 4 port Belkin model WITH external power supply. I have not tested a USB powered only hub.

I am an Apple product supporter, but I cannot give this thing any positive comments. I bought this to replace my apple "UFO" router, mainly because it supports connecting a USB hard drive. Since I bought it, it has constantly dropped PPoE connections and the USB drive is rarely reachable. I was hoping that firmware updates would fix this it, but it made it even worse. After installing 7.2.1, I couldn't authenticate the hard drive. I have had to revert back to older firmware versions to be able to connect to the drive.

I AM a huge apple supporter, but this thing is garbage. My rose-colored can glasses see right through it.

Avoid.