[solofx7]

does anyone have this yet?
any differences?

[TailsToo]

I don't believe that it has shipped yet.

[tiffer17]

A few people have just started to recieve theirs. Like this guy, for example.

[msgreenf]

has anyone in the us gotten one?

[chromos]

i just went and picked one up at a local Apple Store in Burlingame. They just received their shipment ("plenty" she said) but hadn't yet put them out for display.

[solofx7]

Originally Posted by chromos 

i just went and picked one up at a local Apple Store in Burlingame. They just received their shipment ("plenty" she said) but hadn't yet put them out for display.

have you noticed any difference yet?

[goMac]

I've been thinking about getting one, but I don't have any N gear and just sold off my PC, so I don't really need a wired switch. Network hard drive sounds cool though.

Meh.

[TailsToo]

Too much bandwidthn has been used for the Guy with pics... it's a shame!

[TailsToo]

Just called the Sagemore (NJ) store, and they have them in stock now... Sweet!

[chromos]

Originally Posted by solofx7 

have you noticed any difference yet?

Well, I spent a lot of time last nite doing some speed testing, and am not too impressed with the results. First some background, I have a slow (1200 kbps) DSL connection, so I knew that I wouldn't see any improvement there. The real reason I bought the AEBS was to take advantage of the disk sharing. If I could get speedy disk transfers, then Time Machine will be so much more useful once Leopard comes out.

I attached my Western Digital MyBook Pro (triple interface USB2/FW400/FW800) to the AEBS and was timing how long it took to take Backup or the Finder to move a 530 MB file to the hard drive.

I was going to put in a table here, but it looks like the [HTML] codes are off, so I'll try to summarize:

1. When I set the network to be 'n-only' (no a/b/g clients), on either the 2.4- or 5 GHz frequencies, I only got a transfer rate of 1.1 MB/s while on the couch ~40 feet away (no obstacles), using Backup. Since it was n-only, I was the only connected client at the time.

2. As above, but using the Finder to move the Backup archive, I got ~1.5 MB/s, so for some reason there's overhead in using Backup.

3. When I was sitting right next to the base station, using n-only 5 GHz, I was able to get 1.7 MB/s, and using b/g compatible 2.4 GHz, 1.9 MB/s.

4. For comparison, moving the same file using the Finder while connected directly using cables, USB2.0: 21 MB/s, and FW800: 29 MB/s.

So, I don't know where the problem lies: my hard drive, the base station software, something else? I can normally see about 4 other wifi networks in the Airport menu, but I was trying different channels and didn't see a difference. Besides, I think they're certainly not n, and I didn't see any better performance on the 5 GHz frequency.

The only other positive change of the new AE from my old Netgear MR814 is that the Netgear had to be rebooted between uses of the Cisco VPN client, depending on whether I used the Windows client (from within Parallels) or the Mac client. The AEBS can handle both without needing the reboot.

I'll be interested to hear in others' performance findings with attached hard disks.

[Edit] one more con that I just remembered: while the MyBook Pro is connected to the AEBS, it is constantly spinning, even if there are no clients connected to the base station.

[krove]

Questions:

1. What is spinning?

2. Do you have a Core 2 Duo or Core Duo MBP? (I'm assuming Core 2 Duo given that you went N-only, but I thought I would verify.)

3. What is your external HD formatted to, FAT or HFS+? (This determines what protocol is used in file sharing via the Airport Extreme.)

4. Did you run the 802.11n-enabler program? (Also assuming that you did since you went N-only.)

[chromos]

Originally Posted by krove 

Questions:

1. What is spinning?

2. Do you have a Core 2 Duo or Core Duo MBP? (I'm assuming Core 2 Duo given that you went N-only, but I thought I would verify.)

3. What is your external HD formatted to, FAT or HFS+? (This determines what protocol is used in file sharing via the Airport Extreme.)

4. Did you run the 802.11n-enabler program? (Also assuming that you did since you went N-only.)

1. The NAS hard drive is spinning.
2. Yes, a 17" C2D MBP
3. Formatted as HFS+ Journalled
4. Yes, the install disk installs the AirPort Utility, AirPort Disk Utility, AirPort Extreme Update 2007-001, and the AirPort 802.11n Enabler.

[Edit] Oh, I see the confusion. Yes I have both a MacBook Pro and a MyBook Pro. Unfortunate confluence of acronyms.

[justinkim]

I've set mine up with an 802.11n only network at 5GHz and wide channels.

Transferring files from an Intel Mac Mini connected to the network by 100Mbps Ethernet to my Macbook Pro in a part of the house I always had problems with on my old g network, I was seeing sustained 8MB/sec transfer rates.

Near the base station, I see consistent 10.5-10.7MB/sec transfer rates.

[TailsToo]

I picked up one today, but I won't be back home until Monday to try it out.. I'll let you know how things go when I get back.

[krove]

Originally Posted by justinkim 

I've set mine up with an 802.11n only network at 5GHz and wide channels.

Transferring files from an Intel Mac Mini connected to the network by 100Mbps Ethernet to my Macbook Pro in a part of the house I always had problems with on my old g network, I was seeing sustained 8MB/sec transfer rates.

Near the base station, I see consistent 10.5-10.7MB/sec transfer rates.

That sounds about right. I was imagining something akin to 100 Mbs max and you're probably hitting the realistic max at just over 80 Mbs. 802.11n can be rated much faster, but Apple has yet to release any hard data on just how or when we might see these rates.

I wonder what the deal is with the file sharing transfer, or if we're just seeing an isolated case. Does anyone else have an external USB drive and a brand-new Airport Extreme?

[justinkim]

One nice thing is that I finally have enough wireless bandwidth to stream HD content from my MythTV backend to my MBP

[solofx7]

thanks for all of the info...
other than the newwork storage and printer sharing is there a reason to get this if i currently have a N router?

[kamina]

Originally Posted by solofx7 

thanks for all of the info...
other than the newwork storage and printer sharing is there a reason to get this if i currently have a N router?

It's pretty?

[brokenjago]

[Cadaver]

My unit arrived today. I'm putting it in place of the previous AirPort Extreme base station. I don't have any 802.11n-compatible equipment (original CD MacBook, original CD MacBook Pro, a Mac Pro w/out AirPort card, and an iMac G5), but I ordered in anticipation of the arrival of my Apple TV, hoping the N protocol would provide more robust streaming.

I was, however, able to test the throughput of the old base station to the new one - I have a dual-tuner Series 2 TiVo connected to the wireless network via an AirPort Express unit (TiVo's ethernet to AirPort Express). It used to take about 45 minutes to transfer a 1GB (1hr) TV show from the TiVo. With the new base station in place, and the WDS network appropriately reconfigured (AirPort Express unit in bridge mode), it took less than 30 minutes (24 to be exact) to transfer the same 1hr show.

So not sure exactly why, but the throughput of my 802.11g network seems to have improved with the new base station, or at least it has between my Mac and my TiVo. Maybe the new base station is powerful enough to cut through the interference of my neighbors' networks.

It was kind of a hassle, though, to reconfigure my WDS network - I've got 3 AirPort Express units in the house as wireless-to-ethernet bridges as not all my network devices are wireless and its too hard to run Cat5 cable in my house. I had to reconfigure each one, one at a time, using the new AirPort Utility that came with the new base station. After each one though, I had to quit and relaunch the AirPort Utility as it would fail with an error message if I tried to reconfigure two AP Express units in a row. The software would say something to the effect of, "Error in communicating with base station. Quit AirPort Utility and try again." And the software did unexpectedly quit once, too. So not a huge hassle, and I know I had to reconfigure everything anyway with the new AP Extreme base station, but it could have been a bit smoother.

Haven't played with USB disk sharing yet, but the new AirPort software does have a setting to auto-mount an AirPort-shared disk when your computer connects to the network - a very nice feature. Having to manually connect to a NAS volume every time can get tiring.

[TailsToo]

Seems to work okay so far, but being that I currently only have one Mac, It's hard to say (Come on Apple, release a Mini with N already!!!) The Hard Drive feature is cool - I was able to stream ripped DVDs to my MacBook from across the house, and they played great... no skips at all!

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Cadaver 

My unit arrived today. I'm putting it in place of the previous AirPort Extreme base station. I don't have any 802.11n-compatible equipment (original CD MacBook, original CD MacBook Pro, a Mac Pro w/out AirPort card, and an iMac G5), but I ordered in anticipation of the arrival of my Apple TV, hoping the N protocol would provide more robust streaming.

I was, however, able to test the throughput of the old base station to the new one - I have a dual-tuner Series 2 TiVo connected to the wireless network via an AirPort Express unit (TiVo's ethernet to AirPort Express). It used to take about 45 minutes to transfer a 1GB (1hr) TV show from the TiVo. With the new base station in place, and the WDS network appropriately reconfigured (AirPort Express unit in bridge mode), it took less than 30 minutes (24 to be exact) to transfer the same 1hr show.

So not sure exactly why, but the throughput of my 802.11g network seems to have improved with the new base station, or at least it has between my Mac and my TiVo. Maybe the new base station is powerful enough to cut through the interference of my neighbors' networks.

The performance may have improved, but it's still piss poor. 1GB in 24 minutes is less than 6Mbps. My $30 D-link gives me about ~20Mbps throughput.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The performance may have improved, but it's still piss poor. 1GB in 24 minutes is less than 6Mbps. My $30 D-link gives me about ~20Mbps throughput.

No, the TiVo's transfer speed is piss poor (5-7 Mbit/sec according to TiVoCommunity.com). But its way better than before.

[chipchen]

Got mine last week.... been playing with it on and off. Here's some thoughts:

As an AirPort Extreme Base Station, it's just about the same. Still reliable and still great range.

The new AirPort Utility is streamlined. Only gripe about it is that it's in auto "idiot" mode. But if you go to the menu "Base Station" and choose "Manual Setup," you can get to all the other options. I like it much better than AirPort Admin Utility.

Air Disk is awesome. As soon as I plugged in a drive, my MacBook popped up a message asking if I wanted to connect to it. And wow, it's awesome. I love Air Disk. I transferred a 40MB file in less than 10 seconds... awesome.

And they FINALLY added some ethernet ports to the back...

[Gamoe]

I've been doing some reading about 802.11n and network disk sharing. Can anyone clarify for me if the new Airport disk sharing function is technically a NAS? I find the concept and potential utility rather interesting, and I've even looked at some of those Ethernet-port drives in the past, but I wonder which is faster and how they stack up against each other in other areas as well.

One of the things I'm wondering is: Would it be possible to access a shared USB drive from a remote Internet connection? Or even a printer, for that matter? It would be really handy if one could just access the drive remotely and save a file or a whole series of files over. And it'd be cool if one could remotely command one's printer to print out a document, and have it readily available when one got home (or just do it for the coolness factor :grin: ).

I know there would probably be an issue with a dynamic IP, but that aside, would it be possible to remotely access these functions via the router? If so, aren't there some ways around the issue of a dynamic IP?

As far as wired Ethernet is concerned, wouldn't networking between two modern Macs and/or PCs be faster with a router supporting 1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (as I understand it, all Macs today support this speed/standard)?

I am assuming that this wouldn't impact the Internet connection, because this would run at a much slower speed anyway (for most people). But how much, if any, difference in speed would Gigabit Ethernet make? And would this also affect the performance of a shared disk, locally or remotely-accessed?

[kamina]

Yes, it could be thought of as NAS, it does not really differ from that. Unfortunatly based on early reviews it seems the performance is really bad. People are only getting about 2MB/s from an attached drive, while even the worst ethernet based NAS devices I've seen reach 6MB/s (and the best cheap ones go to about 30MB/s).

My guess is that the problem comes from the USB connection. It requires CPU to use anything through a USB connection, and the device is just not fast enough.

You are correct in thinking a 1000mbit connection would be faster. The best a 100mbit connection (as the one in this device) can do is about 11MB/s, so it can quickly become a bottleneck for devices that are attached by Ethernet. It won't make a difference if you are transferring from a wireless computer to one connected by Ethernet though.

[toddtmw]

I stopped at the Apple Store yesterday and picked up the new Airport Extreme. Early reviews listed USB access as not so fast, but I decided to give it a try myself. I tested a lot of different transfers to see what kind of speed I got. Here are my results.

The players:
Mirage (iMac Core Duo wired Ethernet)
Aladdin (MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo)
Genie (Windows XP Desktop Computer wired Ethernet)
Gamenight (USB Drive Connected to the Airport)
Menu Meters (Used to monitor speed)
All transfers initiated from Aladdin. All units are MB/s

Wired (Through the Airport Express...and my house network):
Samba from Mirage to Aladdin: 7.5 - 8
Appletalk from Mirage to Aladdin: 11.5
Samba from Aladdin to Mirage: 8-8.5
Appletalk from Aladdin to Mirage: 11.5
Appletalk (Assumed) from Aladdin to Gamenight: 3.2-4.5
Appletalk (Assumed) from Gamenight to Aladdin: 5.2-5.6
Samba from Aladdin to Genie: 7.4
Samba from Genie to Aladdin: 7.9-8

Wireless (Wireless Connections are 802.11n only at 5 GHz):
Samba from Mirage to Aladdin: 8-8.5 Appletalk from Mirage to Aladdin: 11
Samba from Aladdin to Mirage: 6.8-7.7 Appletalk from Aladdin to Mirage: 10.5-11
Appletalk (Assumed) from Gamenight to Aladdin: 3.6-3.9
Appletalk (Assumed) from Aladdin to Gamenight: 2.8-3.4
Samba from Aladdin to Genie: 7.2-7.7
Samba from Genie to Aladdin: 7.9-8

Well, I think the most interesting thing here is that Mac to Mac transfers over wireless were about the same as over wired. I also think that if the AE had either a gigabit WAN port or gigabit switch ports, we might actually see faster wireless speeds.

Just for fun, I did the Appletalk Mirage - Aladdin transfers both ways at the same time. The speed on each side dropped to about 8.5. (Receive was generally slower than send. Send got up in the 9's, receive dropped into the 7's.)

Doing the double transfer over wireless, the speed was about 6.1 each way. Transmit got up to 6.4, receive got as low as 5.7

Overall, it's looking pretty good. I have three drives hooked to the base station and should get four more hooked up over the weekend.

[jsnyder]

I'm getting similar performance to toddtmw. Works pretty well, it'd be nice to see some speeds out of it that could actually saturate the link speed it is supposedly providing, but ah well. Perhaps we'll see an update that'll give it a little bit of a boost later? With N-only the link speed is listed at 300Mb/s, and around 180Mb/s with g/b compatibility enabled. I'd like to see disk transfers saturating that, it'd be like wireless USB2 :-)

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

So does Apple have a site that lists what printers are compatible?

[solofx7]

Originally Posted by kamina 

It's pretty?

that is a good reason, but i have a n router and am not sure if i should sell it and get this one.

[theokandroid]

Anyone know if you could theoretically hook up an iPod to this and transfer wirelessly? It'd be nice to clear my desk of all the wires.

[krove]

Originally Posted by theokandroid 

Anyone know if you could theoretically hook up an iPod to this and transfer wirelessly? It'd be nice to clear my desk of all the wires.

I seriously doubt it. The USB port is for printers and hard drives, and while the iPod can function as a hard drive, you would only have access to that on any computer on the network, not the hidden iTunes functionality of the iPod. iTunes would not see the iPod at all.

It seems really dumb that Apple went with a USB port for the NAS function. I have several external HDs from OWC, but have always stayed away from models with USB ports because USB is piss-poor slow and I'd never use it. Little did I know that Apple would introduce a product necessitating USB. While the silicon for FireWire is more expensive (not exorbitantly, but enough to impact cost/price targets/margin, I'm sure), its efficiency is far superior to USB. It's really too bad AE doesn't have a FireWire port, as mentioned elsewhere.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by krove 

It seems really dumb that Apple went with a USB port for the NAS function. I have several external HDs from OWC, but have always stayed away from models with USB ports because USB is piss-poor slow and I'd never use it. Little did I know that Apple would introduce a product necessitating USB. While the silicon for FireWire is more expensive (not exorbitantly, but enough to impact cost/price targets/margin, I'm sure), its efficiency is far superior to USB. It's really too bad AE doesn't have a FireWire port, as mentioned elsewhere.

I think it makes sense: USB is ubiquitous, cheap, and faster than the networking options on the Airport Extreme (20MBps for USB2 vs 12MBps for ethernet and single digit MBps for 802.11n).
Also, USB+FW enclosures are often cheaper than Firewire only enclosures, probably due to economy of scale.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by krove 

but have always stayed away from models with USB ports because USB is piss-poor slow and I'd never use it.

How is 480Mbps "piss-poor slow?" It's on a par with Firewire and in transfers of "normal-sized" files (not huge ones, which Firewire is somewhat better for), has a slight advantage.

Or are you still thinking of USB 1.1's 12Mbps-which is ancient history, by the way.

USB 2.0 connected-drives should be much faster than anything (including your draft-N wireless) on your network.

[krove]

Take a look at these graphs:

USB 2.0 versus FireWire

FireWire 400 beats the crap out of USB 2. The newer Intel Macs have better USB 2 speeds, but still max out at 20 MB/sec read or write. Granted, this is on Macs, but to date, no Mac has shipped that offers comparable USB 2 speeds to that of FireWire 400, not to mention FireWire 800.

[edit] You're completely right that USB 2 drives ought to still saturate the AE's wired or wireless connections, though, and should be sufficient. Obviously, something has gone wrong in Apple's implementation or there is some other factor we don't know about.

[krove]

FireWire only enclosures are cheaper at OWC because it costs a few extra bucks to put in those extra ports and chipset required to support USB:

FireWire 400 (Oxford 911, $34) : ADS Pyro FireWire 400 at OWC
FireWire 400 + USB (Oxford 911, $79) : OWC Mercury Elite-AL at OWC
FireWire 400/800 (Oxford 912, $79) : OWC Mercury Elite Pro-AL at OWC
FireWire 400/800 + USB (Oxford 922, $99) : OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro at OWC
FireWire 400/800 + USB + eSata (Oxford 924, $129) : OWC Mercury Elite-AL Quad Interface at OWC

Tacking on USB adds a few bucks (for the ports and extra chipset), regardless of economies of scale.

I didn't really mind the USB at all until I learned here that the throughput is awful. But depending on what sort of firmware/OS the AE uses, building in FireWire drivers may have been too much of an undertaking giving the previous existence of USB functionality on previous incarnation of the Airport Base Station.

Let's just hope they fix the USB throughput problem. I won't order an AE until they do.

[solofx7]

i just got my New Airport and i annot get my female friends pc to even see the router. it is very very odd.

[TailsToo]

Okay, now that i have 802.11n working on the Mac, does anyone have any suggestions for XP under Bootcamp? The APE is set up to work in 802.11n (5GHz) mode only, so I can't connect with Windows any more.... any suggestions? Wasn't there a driver that would work with a MacBook Pro to give it n support?

Thanks!

[TailsToo]

Google is our friend:

http://drivers.softpedia.com/progDow...oad-23460.html

Seems to work with my MacBook Pro!

[mduell]

Originally Posted by krove 

FireWire only enclosures are cheaper at OWC because it costs a few extra bucks to put in those extra ports and chipset required to support USB:

FireWire 400 (Oxford 911, $34) : ADS Pyro FireWire 400 at OWC
FireWire 400 + USB (Oxford 911, $79) : OWC Mercury Elite-AL at OWC
FireWire 400/800 (Oxford 912, $79) : OWC Mercury Elite Pro-AL at OWC
FireWire 400/800 + USB (Oxford 922, $99) : OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro at OWC
FireWire 400/800 + USB + eSata (Oxford 924, $129) : OWC Mercury Elite-AL Quad Interface at OWC

Tacking on USB adds a few bucks (for the ports and extra chipset), regardless of economies of scale.

You're not going to see the economy of scale if you look at one low-volume "house" product line from one vendor. Newegg has $20 FW400+USB2 enclosures (cheapest FW400 only is $31) and $64 FW800+USB2 enclosures, which is cheaper than the FW only enclosures you linked to.

Originally Posted by TailsToo 

Google is our friend:

ATHEROS-ZIDAS AR5008 Driver 6.02.75 Driver for Windows 95/98/9X/ME/NT/2000/2K/XP/2003 Free Download - Softpedia

Seems to work with my MacBook Pro!

Oh no, free drivers! I think you need to pay a few dollars for that.

[krove]

I chose the most reliable product that I know.

Either way, most enclosures now have USB. Back when I purchased mine, the dual FireWire/USB option was new and I didn't even own a mac with USB 2.0, so I can only blame myself.

[MikeD]

So you can connect multiple HD's to one Airport Extreme now? I thought there was only one port for the drives? Would this be a way that we can have one drive for backups, one drive for video, one drive for music etc??

If so... Sounds like a good thing to me... just slow I guess with the USB.

[krove]

Yes, you can connect a USB hub and then connect multiple HDs and printers.

[Stingrey]

I read in this post that the drives are mounted automagically when the computer is connected to the network, but how about disconnecting? Like say you have a laptop and put it to sleep to take it to school. You won't get that nasty "Device Removal" error indicating that you did not properly put away the disk, will you?

[MikeD]

Thanks sounds great! Now here's a unique question, if you are using a dual band network, can computers connected to the OLD AEBS (which is connected via ethernet to the NEW AEBS) have access to the printers and HD's??

[ghporter]

Probably, but it depends on what part of the network is assigning addresses. If the same part (for example the new AEBS) is giving addresses to everything, they'll all be on the same subnet and should be able to "see" each other and all the shared peripherals.

[sashakla]

I attached my Western Digital MyBook Pro (triple interface USB2/FW400/FW800) to the AEBS and was timing how long it took to take Backup or the Finder to move a 530 MB file to the hard drive.

How did you manage to connect your MyBook Pro to the APE(n)? I also have one (1TB) WD MyBook Pro II and it is formatted for RAID1-HFS+-Journaled. The Airport Utility recognizes it and shows proper details (name, capacity etc.). But the Airport Disk Utility just sinply doesn't list any disks, period. What am I missing here?

I even tried formatting it with NTFS (i have both - a PC and a MacBook Pro), just for kicks, but in that case the APE(n) would of course not recognize the drive properly and suggest I plug it into the Mac directly and format.

Any help is greatly appreciated.