Wireless Home Networking - Index of

“Come in, AirPort base station. Over.”
Apple currently sells two wireless routers, which they call base stations. The
current state-of-the-Apple-art is the AirPort Extreme base station with Gigabit
Ethernet. This $179 base station is fully compatible with the 802.11n draft 2.0
standard (see Chapter 3) and includes the following features:
� High-speed networking: Using 802.11n on the wireless side of the house
and full Gigabit (1000 Kbps) wired Ethernet connections for three devices,
this router provides connections as fast as any on the market.
� A USB port: The USB port can be configured to provide
• A printer connection (using the built-in print server) that lets you
share just about any USB printer over the network, so you can send
print jobs from your Macs or Windows computers to a central
printer.
• A shared storage device (called AirPort Disk), using a USB hard
drive. You simply plug in any USB external hard drive and enable
the AirPort Disk feature by using Apple’s software, and Macs and
Windows computers can share the hard drive space for backups,
storage of media files (such as digital music), and more.
• A USB hub feature (you need to provide your own hub), with which
you can “double up” your AirPort Extreme base station’s USB port,
attaching more than one printer and/or hard drive at once.
� Up-to-date security support: The AirPort Extreme base station with
Gigabit Ethernet supports WPA and WPA2 encryption, as well as support
for business-grade security standards such as RADIUS and 802.1x.
� Dual-band support: Like most 802.11n draft 2.0 devices, the AirPort
Extreme base station with Gigabit Ethernet can be used on either the 2.4
GHz or 5 GHz bands, meaning you can move your wireless traffic to the
less crowded 5 GHz band if that’s an issue in your home, or keep it on
the 2.4 GHz band for maximum range and compatibility with older
802.11b or g equipment.
Figure 8-1 shows the AirPort Extreme base station with Gigabit Ethernet.
Getting aboard the Express
Chapter 8: Setting Up a Wireless Mac Network
The AirPort Extreme isn’t the only Apple entry in the AP space (and, in fact,
it’s not even the most interesting!). Apple also has a small form factor (about
the size of a deck of cards) access point known as the AirPort Express (see
Figure 8-2).
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