#APPLE AIRPORT EXTREME AC UPDATE#
#APPLE AIRPORT EXTREME AC MANUAL#

Together with 802.11ac technology, they let you connect faster, farther, and with more power than ever before. There are now six of them - three for the 2.4GHz band and three for the 5GHz band. We also increased the number of antennas. With the antennas at the top of the elevated design, AirPort Extreme now has a higher platform for dispersing the signal.When we tested that version of the AirPort we found it had comparable performance to the latest flagship 11ac routers with USB 3.0-attached flash drives, with an averaged result of 54 and 24 MB/s respectively for large-file sequential reads and writes. If router-attached storage is your need, it would be wiser to pay an extra £80 to gain the 2 TB space available in the AirPort Time Capsule.

That’s amply fast enough for an attached printer although it would discourage the use of an attached USB drive for file serving, or Time Machine backups (which is possible if officially unsupported). Its USB port was the slowest on test, held back by its USB 2.0 spec to reach 20 MB/s read speeds and just 9 MB/s for writing. In draft 11ac mode the AirPort Extreme had a middle-order average of 572 Mb/s at close range, falling to a less competitive 328 Mb/s over the 10 m distance. But in the 10 m test it returned the best results on test, breaking records while averaging 159 Mb/s, where the nearest competition has been 20 Mb/s or more slower. In our close-range tests over 2 m the AirPort Extreme performed as well as the best routers we’ve seen can muster on 2.4 GHz 11n – just over 170 Mb/s average.

#APPLE AIRPORT EXTREME AC UPDATE#

In our experience, we’ve had to wait for an hour when first setting up in order for the provider to update their MAC logs.Īpple AirPort Extreme 802.11ac (6th Generation) review: Performance Another power user option absent is changing of MAC address, which can be a mild inconvenience for users whose ISP tries to lock their connection to a specific router or modem. VPN passthrough is available although there’s no VPN server option. You can select a bridged mode if you don’t wish to use the AirPort as a DHCP server, and it’s a straightforward operation to introduce additional AirPort Extreme or Express units to extend the wireless network.Īccess Control is offered to restrict named wireless clients from getting an internet connection during a pre-arranged time and day schedule.

#APPLE AIRPORT EXTREME AC MANUAL#

Most of the usual features are included, for example, to configure each radio network with its own name and password, automatic or manual selection of channel. In place of a full-screen webpage, the setup utility offers all setup facilities through a small application window or alternatively through an iPad or iPhone app. See allĪpple AirPort Extreme 802.11ac (6th Generation) review: Interface And in contrast to most routers that reuse the same aerial elements for transmit and receive, the AirPort Extreme has six separate antennae, spaced around the upper section just below the top surface, three each dedicated to either wireless transmission or reception. The Apple router unusually includes a cooling fan inside, although we found this effectively inaudible in normal use. Apple supplies a matching white cable in the box. Instead you just plug in a figure-of-eight (IEC C7) mains lead. Unlike any other router, its power supply is mounted internally, so there is no unsightly wallwart and its twisty-tangly cable to hide. But there are many details that set it up from the larger crowd of routers, which often seem to be based on a reference design from Broadcom that’s been cloned into different-shaped boxes. The two AirPort devices are externally identical, the only difference being the addition of the 2 or 3 TB SATA disk inside the latter unit.Īt its core the AirPort Extreme is a fairly conventional dual-band 11ac router, based on a Broadcom chipset, with three stream capability. This enables straightforward full-system backups of any Apple Mac on the network, with automatic incremental backups every hour. There are two versions of the AirPort station, the standard Extreme version tested here and the Time Capsule version that includes a 3.5in hard disk inside.

Apple airport extreme ac