Apple’s new Airport Extremes, announced a few days ago, have several features that make them very useful for small business environments.
Foremost is the guest network. As well as your main Wireless LAN, you can set up a secondary wLAN which can be restricted to internet access only – preventing access to your internal network. the Airport Extreme can be configured to allow devices on this guest network to communicate with each other, if you wish.
Security options are interesting here – none, WPA or WPA/WPA2. This is because the 802.11n spec does not allow WEP security.
The new Airport Extreme also has two radios built in – one operating on the 5Ghz band and one on the 2.4Ghz. This allows useful network traffic separation – 802.11n-only on 5Gz for all new network equipment, and 802.11n/g/b on 2.4Ghz for older equipment. Each frequency can have a separate SSID – useful in some circumstances, but will break the seamless roaming Apple brought out in the Airport update earlier this week.
As before, holding down Option when selecting radio mode gives full access to the radio choices. However, the defaults of 802.11/a/n and 802.11b/g seem perfectly reasonable.
In summary, this device is useful for separating out older devices onto their own network, allowing newer computers with 5Gz-capable network adapters their own clear space without the need for two wireless access points.
However, if you still need WEP access for old devices on the 2.4Ghz side, then you will still need a second access point. If that’s the case, and you already have one on 5Ghz and one on 2.4GHz, then there’s nothing really to recommend rushing out and buying a new Airport Extreme just yet.
Their final new feature is MobileMe integration. If you have a MobileMe account, USB hard drives attached to the access point are shared via the Back to My Mac. Useful for getting access to data from wherever you are – if you can get Back to My Mac working properly. I never have!
Posted: March 6th, 2009 under Comment, Review.
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