Apple Airport Extreme router: overview, description, features, setup and reviews

The love and respect of the owners of Apple products to the manufacturer are endless, because this is the only company in the world that tries to please the entire end-user. Ease of use, excellent design, modern technology and technical support. Naturally, the well-known brand, following the latest trends in the market of wireless technologies, came to the conclusion that the organization of secure local area networks also need to be taken in hand. In the focus of this article, Apple Airport Extreme is a router capable of creating and maintaining the full functionality of a wired and wireless network. Overview, description, specifications, settings and reviews will help the buyer make a choice in the market of similar devices.

The wind of change

It should be noted that the designers and designers of Apple have always differed from competitors in their ability to think creatively and create unique products, following the trends of the market. The router Apple Airport Extreme was no exception. On the market, the buyer can detect several modifications of this device with the same name, but radically different from each other in appearance. It is quite normal and natural phenomenon, as the producer points out. Devices belong to different generations, and the differences between them are insignificant.

In this article, a potential buyer will be able to get acquainted with several options offered by the manufacturer in the domestic market. To say that some kind of router is better, it's impossible, because these are products of absolute quality, and their external difference, minor improvements and additional functionality are just small steps of the manufacturer that must be done in order to follow fashion.

Box with "apples"

Packing products Apple has never stood out with a rich bundle: a router, a power supply (or a power cable, if it comes to Apple Airport Extreme Base Station), a warranty card and instructions - all the necessary kit for full-featured work. There is no RJ-45 interface cable to configure the device. As the owners of the router note in their reviews, it is not needed, since the settings can be made via wireless communication from any Apple device, after downloading the application from the Internet.

As it turned out, in Mac OS there is a special snap-in to configure the router, which even a child can handle, the main thing is to follow the instructions. But Windows users will have to tinker, because the manufacturer of Apple did everything possible to show others the difficulty in working with a well-known operating system. No interface cable in any case can not do.

External review

Traditional high quality plastic uniquely identifies the router on the market among competitors, while the white color of the case and the logo in the form of an apple bitten determine the device's belonging to elite Apple products. The modification of the fifth generation is made in the form of a box with dimensions of 16.5 x 16.5 centimeters. But the miracle of the design idea of the sixth generation of the Apple Airport Extreme ME918RU / A is more like a tower (10x10 cm and 17 cm high). However, the appearance of both devices did not affect the existing interfaces in any way, except that the last device does not have a Kensington lock.

A power connector, a Gigabit WAN port for high-speed Internet connection, one USB port and four RG-45 interfaces for creating a wired LAN (a conventional controlled switch). In the responses of owners, you can often find negative about the USB-port. Firstly, it's only one, although the device's dimensions allow installing several similar interfaces. The second problem lies in the technology itself - USB 2.0 is clearly too old for such a high-tech device, because the whole world has long switched to USB 3.0.

Specifications

New Apple Airport Extreme can work in two bands: at 2.4 GHz the router can support the speed for the standard 802.11n up to 216 MB / s, and at 5 GHz, with the same 802.11n standard, theoretically reaches a speed of 600 megabits per second . For owners of older devices that support Wi-Fi 802.11ac technology, it is possible to work on five gigahertz within 400 megabits per second.

Quite interesting manufacturer came with antennas. Instead of standard directional devices, as it was realized at the access points, the manufacturer placed the antennas inside the case. It can not be said that the signal reception due to this became worse, however, when compared with the professional segment, the coverage of Wi-Fi is several times smaller. Do not forget that the price of the device is also several times smaller than industrial copies.

What is hidden in an expensive device?

Many potential buyers are concerned about the high cost of Apple Airport Extreme 802.11 n. It is clear that it is necessary to pay for the brand and high technologies of the manufacturer, but it is very interesting what components are installed inside the gadget. The manufacturer is not in a hurry to reveal the secrets, so you can get all the answers to the questions with a normal screwdriver.

All chips in the router are labeled by Marvell, including an integrated board and a processor running at 1.2 GHz. The network card of the same manufacturer has additional wiring for seven gigabit ports - probably for the next generation of devices. There is a memory module for one megabyte and support for the standard AV-Bridging (streaming audio and video content in FullHD format). The integrated chip has a RAM module equal to 128 MB and a flash drive with a capacity of 16 megabytes. For the operation of network interfaces is responsible Broadcom controller (installed in all Apple products, so 100% compatibility is provided by hardware). Miniature antennas in the form of rectangles look strange, but, as the tests show, they cope with their task.

Compatibility with operating systems

It is immediately evident that the manufacturer tried its best to "annoy" customers who do not adhere to the habit of having Apple products handy. The WEB interface does not support the router. That says it all. Operating system Mac OS has a built-in configuration utility, owners of tablets and phones can download the program from the network, and everyone else should dance with a tambourine.

Before setting up the Apple Airport Extreme router , all Windows system owners need to go to the official website of the manufacturer, find the necessary application (AirPort Utility) and upload it to their computer. After connecting the RJ-45 cable, configure the router will not be a problem. Owners of the Linux operating system will also have to use the utility for Windows and the Wine emulator, as their manufacturer Apple simply does not recognize.

Configuring an Access Point

When you first start the AirPort utility, the user is immediately prompted to configure Apple Airport Extreme. And the first tab refers directly to the control panel. It is recommended to set a password-authorized input. The second tab refers to the wireless interface. It is necessary to enter the name of the Wi-Fi network visible to the surrounding people and set a security password. Next is the setting of the guest entry - when it is necessary to provide the user with access to the Internet with the prohibition of access to local resources (actively used in cafes and small offices). The manufacturer did not bring up the MAC with the access restriction , for this purpose there is a whole menu, in which once you have registered all the active devices, you can block the connection for other unauthorized "guests", even if the person knows the password on Wi-Fi.

Strange Internet settings

Quite primitive for the Apple Airport Extreme router is the WAN setting. Many Russian users will be dismayed by the lack of point-to-point tunnel connections PPTP and virtual private VPN networks (with the Beeline provider it will not work exactly). The router supports only two connections: direct connection of Ethernet and PPPoE.

However, the gadget can work both as a router and as an access point, which will please owners acquiring this device as a normal Wi-Fi network repeater . The built-in DHCP server allows you to assign a range of allocated addresses, and also has the function of limiting the work on time. There is a NAT address converter, but its use by ordinary users is questionable.

Working with the printer

The instruction for setting up Apple Airport Extreme just one sentence mentions the support of the printer in conjunction with the wireless gadget. No other descriptions of the connection and performance of the printer can not be found by the owner. In fact, the router installed a standard print server, which is implemented on one of the controllers Marvell. You must connect the printer to an Apple AP using the USB 2.0 interface. The AirPort Utility application menu has a corresponding tab in which the printer is configured.

Unequivocally, the printer must be compatible with the equipment (in fact it is a lottery, because in no manufacturer's specification there is a list of recommended products). After discovering the printer, the router will prompt you to show it as a wireless device to users. The additional menu gives permission for remote configuration, however IT experts recommend not to do this in their responses - one person should be responsible for the configuration, so it is more reliable.

External storage

Problems can arise with owners of the router Apple Airport Extreme 802.11 ac and when working with external drives (flash drives and portable hard disks). Do not forget that the popular NTFS format is not recognized by the iOS manufacturer. Accordingly, before connecting, you need to format the drive partitions in the appropriate Apple standard HFS (and can be in FAT32, but then there will be a file size limit of 4 GB). By the way, this format is supported by all Windows operating systems, starting from the seventh version and higher, so there will not be any inconvenience in the further use of the owner.

It should be noted that the functionality with external storage devices on the router is decent - you can not only use the recorded content on Apple and Windows devices, but also view content on any TV that has a Wi-Fi module (DLNA technology implementation in-person).

Problems and solutions

Users who before the purchase of the Apple Airport Extreme router had similar budget-class devices, in their reviews note that the device even works with multiple gadgets without interruption: it does not hang, does not overheat and does not reboot. So it should be, this indicates the quality components installed in the router.

Most users have a problem with the printer, especially when it comes to printers produced before 2009. There are several solutions: try to find a similar driver under Mac OS on the Internet or pull out the configuration file (with the extension "inf") from the old driver under Windows XP. You can act as a real system administrator - submit a similar printer from the existing model line in the list of devices. In this case, it is unlikely that the device will be configured, but it will be 100% printed.

Owner feedback

Quite interesting on the router Apple Airport Extreme reviews. They are more like recommendations that reveal the hidden possibilities of the device. Owners say that it makes no sense to mount a gadget under the ceiling for better signal transmission - the excellent work of directional antennas is able to convey a powerful signal to the user through several capital walls without outside help. Often, users recommend instead of an external hard drive to connect to the gadget NAS systems that perfectly integrate with this router.

Novelty does not support work with torrents and does not know how to work with private virtual networks. It does not matter - you can buy an inexpensive router in the secondary market and create a consistent point-to-point connection, where the role of routing and downloading torrents will be given to an inexpensive device, and the rest of the load will be on the Apple router. There are many options, it would be the owner's desire.

Finally

To say that the Apple Airport Extreme gadget is a complete solution of the manufacturer, it is impossible, because while there are questions of owners to the device, there are unsolved problems. Apple through market research should constantly upgrade its devices. However, if the question concerns the operability and functionality of the router, compared to competitors in the network gadget market, then the answer is obvious - the Airport Extreme device is clearly the leader. All owners of mobile and computer equipment with the Apple logo purchase this router will bring only positive emotions.