The latest generation of Apple’s AirPort Extreme base station truly deserves the word extreme in its name. It is one of the first 802.11n wireless routers on the market and it delivers incredible performance when paired with a Mac (or PC) featuring 802.11n support, as well as a much wider range than previous models. Speed isn’t the only reason why the $179 base station is extreme. The device is actually much more than a wireless router. It includes a USB port that can be used to wirelessly share printers or even hard drives.
For home users or small business owners, this amazing combination of features for a relatively low price point is a great tool. Many small businesses need a solution for sharing files, but don’t have the need or resources to set up a full-blown server. While network-attached storage devices are also an option, they are often more expensive, and many don’t offer easy Mac-friendly setup tools.
Easy Setup
Installing the new base station is a fairly simple process—even more so than Apple’s previous base stations. Like past preceding models, the base station is configured by using an application rather than a web-based interface, which is used with most home or small office routers. Unlike earlier base stations, which have shipped with both a setup assistant and more advanced administration tool, the newest AirPort Extreme base station ships with a single tool called AirPort Utility (a version is included for both Mac OS X and Windows) that can also be used to manage previous generations of base stations including the highly portable AirPort Express. Although it is a single utility, AirPort Utility offers both a guided setup interface that is easy to navigate, even for users with limited technical or network experience.
Sharing Hard Drives
Using the AirPort Extreme base station as a file server provides a great solution for families as well as small office users. It can provide a space for shared files as well as a space for backups. Using a USB hub, you can attach multiple hard drives, enabling you to easily expand your storage needs.
Although the base station can act as a file server for attached hard drive, you will need to first format the drive using a computer. The base station can access drives formatted by either a Mac or Windows, but they must be formatted as Mac OS X Extended or FAT 32, respectively. Once a drive is formatted, simply attach it to the base station’s USB port (or an attached USB hub).
Attached drives are automatically detected and shared. By default, hard drives are shared with the same password used to configure the base station. You can, however, choose to use a separate password to allow access to the shared drive(s). (This is a good idea if you don’t want your kids or employees to be able to change the base station’s configuration.) Or you can set up individual user accounts. You can also choose to allow guest access so that anyone on your network has access to the disk (and you can specify whether guests have read and write or read-only access).
When using user accounts, you also can specify whether users have no access, read-only access, or full read and write access to shared drives. If you use user accounts, a Users folder is created at the root level of the shared drive. Each user account that you create is assigned a user folder that only that user can access. This procedure provides an easy solution to giving users private storage space and preventing one user from deleting another user’s files.
In addition to sharing files on the network (wired and wireless) that is created by the base station, there is the option of sharing files over the base station’s WAN port (the one that connects to your Internet connection). If your base station is part of a larger network (such as in a school or business environment), this is a great feature because it allows you to enable access to other people connected to that larger network. It can also be used if you are not part of a larger network and want to access your shared hard drive from another location via the Internet (you simply need the IP address that the base station receives from your Internet provider, which can be found on then Internet tab of its configuration dialog box).
Choosing to make your shared hard drive available over the Internet poses security risks, however. Depending on your Internet connection, simply turning this option on can make your shared drive visible to a large number of people using the same provider. This is why you should never enable the Advertise Disks Globally option using Bonjour (Apple’s zero-configuration network technology) if you choose to share your hard drive in this manner. Ensure that guest access is turned off; you should use either a separate disk password or user accounts to secure hard drives, which can offer some security for your base station’s configuration password if someone uses a password-cracking tool to access your shared hard drive. If you do use this option, you should also use it sparingly and disable it whenever you don’t need to provide remote access.
Being a cross-platform device, the base station can share disks with both Macs and Window PCs (regardless of the format of the drive). This is a great touch because many homes and offices have both Macs and PCs. It truly makes the base station a one-stop solution, even if you have a single Mac and multiple PCs or—even no Mac at all.
Connecting to Shared Disks
Apple includes an AirPort Disk Utility that can be used to access shared hard drives. You can also find them by browsing your network as you would to find other file servers or computers with file sharing enabled. The AirPort Disk Utility includes a menu bar indicator for Mac OS X and, by default, automatically detects (and attempts to connect to) any shared hard drives. If you choose to manually browse for shared drives and you are using a password instead of user accounts, you are prompted for a user name and password when connecting. Simply leave the user name section of the dialog box blank.
Sharing Printers
Like AirPort Express, the current AirPort Extreme base station can be used to share attached USB printers. The process is even easier than sharing a hard drive. Simply attach the printer, and the base station makes it available. Computers can locate and access the printer via Bonjour. You can elect to set up the printer using Mac OS X’s Printer Setup Utility or choose it from the Print dialog box’s Printer menu (you’ll find it in the Bon Jour Printers submenu). Windows computers can locate and use printers via Apple’s Bonjour for Windows.
As with shared hard drives, you can also elect to share the printer over the base station’s WAN port, and the base station can support multiple printers through the use of a USB hub. A mix of shared printers and hard drives is also supported when using a USB hub.
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