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Airport Extreme
By Steve Manke Building on past success, Macworld SF 2003 brought a new breed of Apple’s innovative wireless technology known as Airport Extreme. The look of the new Airport Base Station is no departure from past models, but what lurks beneath its icy shell is two steps beyond! Most notable is the speed bump of the new line more accurately, the bandwidth bump. The new lineup transfers data at up to 54Mbps*! That’s almost 5x the performance of current standard in wireless technology. In addition to that, the new models support up to 50 users on either the Mac or Windows platform. This makes the device as well suited for the home office as it is in the corporate environment. Based on the new 802.11g wireless technology, the Airport maintains backward compatibility with older versions with its full support for 802.11b networks. That means that you can add the new Airport Base Station to your LAN without having to update any of your old Airport cards. When communicating with 802.11b devices the Airport reduces its bandwidth to meet with 802.11b’s 11Mbps requirements. Airport Extreme is available in two versions. The first has a built-in 56K v.90 modem and a port to add an external antenna. By adding a third party antenna, you can substantially increase the rand of the wireless network. The second Base Station lacks both the modem and antenna as it is intended for broadband networks. They are priced at $249 and $199 respectively. Both models have built-in firewalls and support 128-bit encryption. An impressive feature new to the Airport Extreme is the USB port that can be used to share a printer with your network. Just plug your Mac compatible USB printer into the USB port of the Base Station and all other Mac on you network have access to that printer**. If you do opt for the model with the antenna port, watch for two antennas due to be released next month. The ExtendedAir Omni is an omni-directional antenna, meaning that it broadcasts the Airport signal all directions. The estimated range is 250 feet. The second option is called the ExtendedAir Direct. This antenna emits the signal in a specific direction up to 500 feet. This is useful if you need to link two networks wirelessly over a fairly long distance. The ExtendedAir Omni is expected to be $99.95, and the ExtendedAir Direct is expected to be $149.95. The Airport Extreme may get its name for its substantial increase in performance, but its feature set is more complete than any other access point to date. Apple led its competitors with the introduction of the original Airport line. Now, not only does Apple remain in the forefront of the wireless movement, but also continues to lead through innovation. *The only computers the currently support AirPort Extreme cards are the newly introduced PowerBook 12” and PowerBook 17”. **Not all USB printers support sharing via Airport Extreme. |