Apple MA073LL/A AirPort Extreme Base Station

10 Review to this product

• 

  D. Wilson
  December 13th, 2010 on 10:49 am

  Rating

  I have had no problems using this base station and it works fabulously with my Mac Book Pro using 802.11N. The speed is great, no lost signal and the distance is fine for my home.
• 

  Frank The Tank
  December 15th, 2010 on 5:52 am

  Rating

  Purchased: May 27th, 2007

  I purchased an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station based on several key functions:

  1. Ease of setup
  
  2. Ability to print wirelessly
  
  3. Ability to set up a wireless usb drive

  I installed the included Airport Software on my IBM T60 laptop that runs XP. The Airport Software Utility guided me through the wireless set up procedures and within 15 minutes I had set up a secured wireless network that allowed me to access both my Brother 2040 laser printer and my 250 GB Western Digital My Life USB hard drive (A USB hub is required to operate both the printer and hard drive at the same time). I was worried that I would not be able to use the Western Digital backup software over the wireless network, but it still works like a charm. The backup is a little slow compared to a direct connection to the drive, but I just schedule my weekly backups to start in the middle of the night after I have gone to bed.

  I have had no issues in the two weeks following my purchase and setup. I am extremely happy with this product and I recommend it to both friends and family as a one stop solution for creating a secure wireless network with printing and file sharing capabilities. The $170 price tag may seem high, but it is well worth it! My only complaint is that there ought to be two USB ports instead of just one.

  Update: July 28th, 2007

  Two weeks ago I performed another data backup from my T60 to my Wester Digital USB hard drive while I was sleeping. When I woke up the next morning I went to check on the backup file. When I opened the drive folder in “My Computer” while on the wireless network it appeared as if my entire drive had been erased, however, the drive information on the left side of the drive folder listed the folder capacity as having roughly 80 GB of free storage left.

  I connected the drive directly to my laptop and all of my files were visible again. I reconnected the drive to the base station and opened the drive over the network. Again, the drive appeared, but none of my folders/files were visible. I reinstalled the Base Station software and also checked for firmwar updates but it did not resolve the problem. I can still print wirelessly, but the most important feature to me in the product is now malfunctioning. I am still looking for a solution to this problem in the Apple support forums.

  Update May 13th, 2008:

  Turns out one of the Airport Extreme updates caused my drive to appear empty while connected to my wireless network. I uninstalled then reinstalled the Airport Utility software from the disk provided with the Base Station. After setting up my network again, I was able to view the content of my drive while attached to the Base Station. I have refused all further suggested updates for my Base Station for fear of running into the same problem again. After several months, I have not had the same problem again.
• 

  D. Chandler
  December 15th, 2010 on 1:58 pm

  Rating

  This Airport Extreme Base Stations ROCKS the house. I’m using it to connect wirelessly to a FW800 Dualie, G4 1.42 MacMini, a B&W Smurf and mainly my MacBook Pro C2D 2.33 using OSX and BootCamp WinXP. I couldn’t configure the AEBS strictly for the MBP since I needed to connect with G wireless adapters. I also set up an AirPort Disk (some old FW/USB 2.0 external drive I had lying around). It was setup with two partitions. Works like a charm. I also have a SlingBox Pro running over ethernet and that works perfectly with the AEBS. Some guy named derek in the Sling Community forums figured out how to get it working on the AEBS and gave detailed instructions.

  The RangeMax MIMO I was using with WPA2 was dropping connections every few hours although it put out a strong signal. I had to keep resetting the RangeMax which was very annoying. With the AEBS I get a strong signal and I haven’t had any dropped connections. I’m using OSX.4 Server and my MacBook Pro sometimes couldn’t connect to shared drives because they didn’t always show up in the Network Window. My other machines saw the drives with their G wireless cards, but the Atheros chipset didn’t always see them. Very frustrating. Using the AEBS, they show up every time on the MacBook Pro.

  I had to give my WPA2 password 13 characters in order to have it connect to WinXP in BootCamp. Still no drivers for the Atheros chipset in WinXP so it only connects at 54 MB/s,

  Overall I’d say the Airport Extreme Base Station is excellent. It’s compact, solid and has very nice configuration software. The only mildly annoying thing about it is when you make minor configuration changes, the AEBS has to restart and that takes a bit of time. And no external antennas or provisions for them. Still, it’s worth it. I look for long usage with this product. Way to go Apple.
• 

  Kelly M. Spore
  December 15th, 2010 on 3:41 pm

  Rating

  My wife and I recently moved and this move required me to start over on designing my wireless network. The challenge for me was to design one that worked over all 3000 square feet of the house. My previous house was only 1600 sq feet and with one NetGear wireless router (a Linksys before that) I was able to do so without too much trouble and descent signal strength. Verizon FIOS provided me with a wireless router (Altec I believe) but it’s location and the size of the house meant that upstairs and one side of the house had little signal.

  I decided I needed to create a multipoint wireless network, or Wireless Distribution Network (WDN). My first choice was Apple’s solution. I had a feeling it work work well and be easy to set-up. The price though drove me away. I didn’t need “N” speeds and didn’t really want to spend nearly $200 on a router, plus $100 per access point. So I went with NetGear.

  After some 6+ hours of frustration, cursing and kicking the family dog a few times and a near divorce from my wife, I gave up. I had chosen one of their G routers and two of their Wireless Repeaters. First I couldn’t get the wireless router to talk to the Verizon router. i just wanted to use the NetGear as an access point, but alas I had no luck. I had equally bad luck with one of the repeaters. I never even bothered to open the second one.

  So I returned the NetGear solution and decided that i would go with the Apple solution. Remember, I spent over 6 hours working on the first solution, pounding my fists into the carpet and hitting my head against the wall. I was ready to go through some of that again, although I just knew it would be easier.

  Easier?!? It wasn’t easier, it was just easy. Here were the steps:

  1. Unbox Router
  
  2. Verify contents of box
  
  3. Load software on Mac (I have a PowerBook, wife has a Dell, Daughter an HP)
  
  4. Plug power into router
  
  5. Plug network cable from Verizon FIOS router to Apple Router
  
  6. Run Airport Utility
  
  7. Answer Questions
  
  8. Access Internet Wirelessly without Problem and with great range…..

  i walked around the house and every inch was covered by the router. i couldn’t find a spot that had no signal, and most had better than average. I decided though to install the Apple Express (repeater). While the Apple Extreme was easy, very easy; I was concerned that the next step would be a challenge. Afterall there is no standard for doing this type of thing and not many people actually use wireless repeaters.

  Steps:
  
  1. Unbox Apple Express
  
  2. Verify contents of box (Just a small brick, that’s it)
  
  3. No software to install, same as Apple Extreme
  
  4. Plug repeater into a wall outlet
  
  5. Run Airport Utility
  
  6. Answer Questions (choosing the option to enable wireless repeating)
  
  7. Choose the network to join
  
  8. Access Internet Wirelessly with 54mb connection in many parts of the house and speeds no slower than 18Mbs when speeds do drop. Since our connection to the net is 15Mbs, no loss.

  Really, when I say this is easy; I mean easy. If you are unsure of how you are going to light up your huge home with wireless connectivity; Apple’s solution will work great. You can use up to 3 of the AirPort Expresses on your network as I recall and their range, while small devices, isn’t bad.

  If you are looking for “N” speeds, these aren’t the way to go; but then Apple doesn’t have wireless repeaters that are “N” certified. Don’t let that stop you, the AirPort Extreme can be used as a repeater and that would give you great coverage and “N” speeds to boot.

  Oh, the Airport utility… super easy to use. Use Automatic to set-up your network, can’t go wrong. Then use manual to tweak the network to your liking.

  Trust me… this was so easy, anyone can create a powerful wireless network. It isn’t inexpensive; but then what is your time worth?
• 

  Christopher White
  December 16th, 2010 on 7:27 am

  Rating

  If this is going to work for anybody it’s going to be me, and it absolutely does. I live in an apartment and use two Macs, a desktop and a laptop. Previously I had tried out a Netgear wireless router which I dropped in the trash after it couldn’t even keep a steady connection with the desktop that was hardwired into it. I’m not a militant Apple person but I figured if I had two Macs, an Apple router was the way to go, and I was correct. I can’t speak for the ease of installation with a PC, but judging from the PC I use at work it might not be pretty. (Although to be fair, XP plug and play is better than it gets credit for in my experience.) With my two Macs at home, it was ridiculously simple. Plug it in, run the set up utility and you are in business. I have my desktop hardwired into it, and my laptop obviously wirelessly connected, and both connections are much more solid than I had hoped. I experience maybe one hiccup in the connection a week on the laptop and the desktop is flawless. (My Netgear router couldn’t even maintain the desktop wired connection.) I wasn’t expecting much from the USB port, I figured I would plug in my HP Laserjet and see what happened. To my surprise it worked immediately and I was able to easily print from both computers. Not only that, but I quickly tested the USB port with a thumbdrive and that worked easily as well. It’s also worth mentioning that the setup utility is pretty easy and intuitive, especially when dealing with security which is useful when you live in an apartment building where everyone with a laptop is licking their chops to borrow your bandwidth.

  So to summarize, I have this set up in my apartment with two Macs. The range is excellent, I have full signal wirelessly at all times, no problems with the wired connection and was easily able to network my printer and share files from a USB thumbdrive. My laptop internet connection is just as fast as the desktop that is wired and I have absolutely no complaints with this router. It’s even nice to look at, although I wouldn’t mind being able to turn off the status light completely. In my opinion it’s worth the premium price to have a solid, no worry router.

  UPDATE 4/7/2007- I decided to purchase an 80GB portable hard drive to share via my network with my two computers. I went ahead and bought a powered USB hub along with it in order to have both my printer and the drive shared. A word of warning, I had some trouble getting the hard drive set up. I hit the Apple forums and eventually was able to solve my problem and now everything works great, but according to my research it looks like I was hardly alone in having trouble. I’m not sure you can take any steps to avoid problems, so take it as you will, but now that everything is working it’s great.
• 

  Jeffrey Heaton
  December 16th, 2010 on 10:15 pm

  Rating

  I owned the previous model, and never had any problems with it, so I upgraded to this one. No dropped signals, a very solid WiFi network. Works with both my Wifi-N based Mac, as well as PC’s.

  However, this unit also allows you to share several hard drives. Unlike some network attached unit makers, the Apple product does NOT require you to format the hard drive to a special format. Just take existing hard drives and share them onto the network. You will have to move all of the files to a shared directory, but this allows you to not share the entire drive, if you desire.

  Only one USB port is provided, but you can attach a hub and use multiple hard drives, as well as a printer. Network printing and hard drives are the way to go if you have several computers. This allows you to print anywhere and backup to one common location.

  If you are upgrading to this product from the previous Apple router, make sure you remove your old airport utilities. They do not work with the new hardware.
• 

  Tin Tin
  December 17th, 2010 on 7:28 pm

  Rating

  Just got the new Airport Extreme “n” version. We were replacing a really old Airport Base Station we’ve had in the home office since 2001.

  First here is a list of items that connect wirelessly throughout our home:

  iBook 500mz, w/standard Airport card
  
  iMac Core 2 Duo 24″, w/Airport Extreme card
  
  Nintendo Wii
  
  Tivo, Series 2
  
  Tivo, Series 2 Humax DVD
  
  HP Officejet 7410

  The switchover went fairly smoothly – plugged in the Airport Extreme, switch the Ethernet cables from the Linksys Router (we has DSL coming in), then went about configuring it. Only took a couple of minutes. Then went to the Macs and selected new network, and was was connected!

  The Wii was the same, very easy to just select the new network.

  The Tivo caused a bit of a problem, both connected via Linksys WUSB11 Wireless-B USB Network Adapter, and even though I set up the AE to be B & G compatible, Tivo would not accept it. In the end I purch 2 Tivo “G” Network Adapters ($100 for both) and then configured Tivo.

  Here is a rundown of assumed speed increases, please note no benchmark testing was performed-this is just my perceptions!

  iBook-nada, same as before
  
  iMac-faster (finally the Airport Exteme card could take advantage of “G” network
  
  Wii-no idea! Don’t know internal specs
  
  Tivo-Big increase in transfering programs between Tivos-actually makes it worthwhile, and a general increase in getting updates etc.

  The negative of course, is we are not taking advantage of the “n” network because no one supports it!! We gained because we went from “B” to “G”. I will probably rant went we need to replace all the network adapters and airport cards when the hardware becomes available for “n”.

  One final benefit we will be using, is the option to add a NAS USB Hard Drive (AirDisk), we are looking at the NewerTech miniStack, as it has the same footprint and will hopefully stack below the AE.
• 

  esanta
  December 18th, 2010 on 4:33 am

  Rating

  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.

  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.

  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. I recommend it highly.
• 

  C. Wunsch
  December 18th, 2010 on 6:49 am

  Rating

  Amazingly, this product worked… right out of the box, and without me having to be a wireless networking guru! I am a very experienced computer user (have been building my own machines for over 10 years) and have now owned several different wireless routers. The key problem has always been getting all of the pieces of equipment to talk to each other. Well, this product worked right out of the box. I bought two of them, one for my base station and the other to plug my XBOX 360, Vonage adapter, and PS-2 into. Additionally, I have linked up a Sony laptop with a Netgear WPN511 PCMCIA card, my Nintendo Wii, and a MacBook pro to the network, all seemlessly with no issues! I will say that I set this system up on my Mac Pro desktop so I can’t speak for the PC setup program. Finally, I shared out numerous drives and files between machines as well as a printer. All with no issues. I am using WPA2 security with a 45 character password with no issues. I highly recommend this product if you stream large files, or have other high bandwidth requirements.
• 

  Raffaele Cetrulo
  December 18th, 2010 on 11:08 pm

  Rating

  Got mine about two weeks ago and all I can say is that it just works beautifully. Setup was a snap, no webpages or reading a manual to find out what the default IP address is, or anything like that. I configured this thing in 5 minutes literally (I’m a geek though) and have not touched it since then. I’m using all the features, cable router, wireless, sharing two disks and printing (using a small Belkin 4 port USB HUB) and all this functionality is just transparent on my Mac. Wireless signal quality is surprisingly good considering there are no antennas hanging out the device. Also, the disk sharing feature works quite fast over wireless, but you really feel the difference if you are wired though (I’m using G). It has a couple of minor drawbacks in my opinion, (1) lack of GigE, I don’t care about it but can be a dealbreaker for some guys and (2) pricey if you just want a router. Although, if you think about all the features it makes sense to spend a few extra $.