“Apple announced its new Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) this week with a bit less fanfare than enjoyed by its other two new products. Sure, the new AEBS won’t change the world, but it does have one new feature that will bring joy to quite a few households. Apple calls it AirPort Disk, and it provides cheap, Apple-simple network storage to home networks,” Chris Stone writes for O’Reilly’s Mac DevCenter.
Stone writes, “The current version of the AEBS includes a USB port that allows network sharing of whatever USB printer is plugged into it. The new version uses a similar USB 2.0 port, but now allows you to plug in a USB storage device, which then becomes shared over the network. You can also plug in a USB hub if you need to share both a printer and disk, or multiples of them. Apple’s not the first to do something like this, but as usual, makes it the easiest.”
Stone writes, “You can attach just about any USB hard drive, formatted either as HFS+ or FAT, and it will become available for sharing using both AFP and SMB protocols and therefore accessible like any other network volumes to Mac, Windows and (presumably) Linux clients on the network.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike H.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple’s new AirPort Extreme supports 802.11n, enables wireless streaming of HD media – January 10, 2007
Apple introduces new AirPort Extreme with 802.11n – January 09, 2007
F’n sweet!
Sounds great for wireless network backup and massive multimedia storage.
And be double sure to secure your network especially with a drive hanging off of it.
Although, I do enjoy driving into neighborhoods and be able to join open networks.
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Anybody know if multiple computers can access it directly as a source for iTunes and iPhoto?
Linksys routers have had this for a long time. Way to “lead”, Apple…
Why not FIREWIRE???!!!
To me, this was the best news from macworld. This, with a macmini core 2 duo – wireless n, will bring my content to my TV. Not Apple TV.
I so wish this had a firewire 800 port on it, of course, I know that the airport isn’t as fast as that but if they combined it with a gigiabit ethernet port it’d be sweet.
My AEBS is only a year or so old, so I don’t want to replace it, but I have been wanting networked attached storage for a while now. I hope apple releases a firmware update for the old AEBS, cause I am saving my money for an iPhone. 😀
So why didn’t they just push a firmware upgrade to allow this on the Airport express?
No upgrade for older BSs because they do not have USB2 – you need this for the HDs.
How about a Apple miniRAID system with the same form factor (though higher or stackable) that could sit underneath it? Going to be needing somewhere to back up all that iTunes data.
Seriously. However, from reports I hear, it is basically a computer, so, I imagine you could hack it to do something like that.
I wonder if it will work with a Windows PC on a network. At present my Windows machine cannot see the USB printer attached to my base station directly, but rather through a network connection to my iMac….
Anyone know?
Ben, to make your Windows PC see the printer in your current base station, you need to download Bonjour for Windows from http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bonjourforwindows.html
“Why not FIREWIRE???!!!”
Because it is over the network…it wouldn’t make a difference.
This is a great feature. I’m glad you can attach a USB hub and share multiple devices.
There is a version of the “miniStack” external hard drive case that is USB only (no FireWire). It’s sold by NewerTech through OWC (macsales.com). That drive would be perfect for this application because it is relatively cheap, has a USB hub built-in with three ports, and allows purchase of empty case to add your own drive. And it has the Mac mini footprint, which happens to be the same as this new base station, so you can put the drive directly under the base station.
> So why didn’t they just push a firmware upgrade to allow this on the Airport express?
I think this new device needed more horsepower to do the share multiple USB devices trick.
Sure, some Linksys routers have this feature, and I have one of those Linksys NAS; however, it requires that I format the harddrive in some non-HFS format. It’s not exactly a Mac-friendly solution. And, it’s not exactly very fast. A wireless-N solution in a Mac-friendly format will be useful.
I wonder if the USB port on iTV works the same way. I find the 40 GB hard drive lacking. I’d love to plug a 250 GB external drive in for all my movies and music.
“Linksys routers have had this for a long time. Way to “lead”, Apple”
Stop eating lemons ‘Bryan” if that really IS your name, and realize that while Apple doesnt always do everything or even most things first, they are usually the first ones to do it right and make it easy.
This appears to be the case here as well.
“Why not FIREWIRE???!!!”
Because it is over the network…it wouldn’t make a difference.
Well as someone who has several firewire external hard drives, it would make a difference to me. Now I have to shell out for a USB case? It drives me crazy that Apple isn’t even supporting their own technology. Would it have been so difficult to include both USB and firewire?
I got all excited about this and then it occurred to me that my current AEBS has several ethernet ports open since I’m using the wireless.
Turns out that there are several ethernet HDD’s that should be attachable to the AEBS, beginning around $108 for 250 GB. See:
<a>http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=ethernet+disk+-cable+-enclosure&btnG=Search</a>
I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll be purchasing one this afternoon to bring home and try out if I can find one at the local Office Depot. If it works I’ll let you know. If not I’ll let you know… and I’ll be returning it. (Which is why i’m buying it close to home and not over the internet.)
(Oops. Guess it’s been a while since I played directly with tags.)
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=ethernet+disk+-cable+-enclosure&btnG=Search
Blessings…
Sucks that if you order now, You won’t get your shipment until march. I ordered but canceled after I saw those estimates. I’d rather wait and buy later.
But this is a winner though, much more minimalist looking and fits under my Mini Stack External drive.
But why haven’t they put a firewire or multiple USB ports? Then you would have to put a unatractive USB hub if you want more things connected.
I wonder though, It would be awsome If I connect the Ministack there and have all your devises working wirelessly.
I saw a Lacie drive that had Network storage via an Ehternet port, but alas after purchasing it realised you could only use it when it was formatted as a FAT32 drive. Of course, backing up your Home Folder was impossible because of FAT32’s lack of support for massive filenames, so it was, effectively , useless to me.
THIS, however, is an amazing piece of news (for me anyway), because now I can have my AEBS, printer and tons of extra storage drives tucked away in the cupboard under the stairs, accessing it all via AirPort using my MacBook Pro. My minialist home will be more minimal than before, and my girlfriend will definitly appreciate the lack of wires all around my desk (she’s a fussy woman, but I love her to bits).
Sweet. I love it when Apple turn up to the party. It always done right.
Now we know why Cisco has its corporate panties in a wad. The AirPort Extreme is a Linksys killer.
I’m with the “why not add firewire crowd?” I have over a terabyte of daisy chained FireWire hard drives; and it would be super cool to just connect them to the wireless base station, instead of directly to my laptop. I wouldn’t use it for video, but for 80% of my file storage and even a large portion of my music, wireless FireWire connection would be more than sufficient.
I know USB2 is more multi-platform, but FireWire still offers better performance, even FireWire 400. So while a number of my drives do have multiple options—FireWire 400, 800, or USB2.0—a few only have FireWire 400; and I don’t plan to get rid of them.
Firewire shouldn’t be abandoned it should be embraced because its superior
I can think of a few reasons why no Firewire:
1. Few windows machines have it. Apple may want to market this more aggressively to PC owners.
2. 801.11n is WAY slower than Firewire, so even if you had firewire, you still wouldn’t be able to get the data to and from the drive any faster than 802.11n. In a wireless environment, Firewire is not the bottleneck. (obviously, if you run ethernet cables to the base station, then Firewire would be the bottleneck)
3. Firewire 400–which is really their only option for this device–is not much faster than USB 2.0.
4. Firewire 400 in this environment is less versatile than USB 2, since most printers are USB. If they added Firewire, they’d also have to add USB, and perhaps that just wasn’t reasonable, given design/pricing constraints.
How about eSATA? And throw in a serial and parallel port too.
People, here is why there is no Firewire 400 or 800 or Gigabit ethernet on the new Airport Extreme Base Station:
Wireless
802.11b 11 Mbps
802.11g 54 Mbps
802.11n 108 Mbps
Internet
Broadband 1 – 1.5 Mbps
Ethernet
10 Base-T 10 Mbps
100 Base-T 100 Mbps
1000 Base-T 1000 Mbps (1 Gbps)
Firewire
400 400 Mbps
800 800 Mbps
USB
1.1 12 Mbps
2.0 480 Mbps
As you can see, even the 802.11n protocol tops out at 108Mbps (theoretical), and even though USB 2.0 won’t ever reach its full stated speed either, it will still easily saturate the wireless channel.
We’re going to have to wait until a wireless protocol has a 10x speed increase before it would become practical to use Firewire 800 instead of USB and Gigabit ethernet instead of 10/100 Base-T.
Including Firewire 400 in the new Airport Extreme would certainly have been nice, but would have added to the cost of the device.
I do much prefer Firewire but Apple STUFFED UP by (1) not making the 400 and 800 plug/socket physically identical and backwards compatible, as per the USB 1.1 / 2.0 plug/socket combo and (2) not initially giving it away. As a result, Firewire 800 remains a niche product, as is even FW400 to a lesser extent because it’s still not standard on many new PCs, unlike our beloved and superior Macs.
hairbo:
Your reasoning for no Firewire is right on the mark. I’m glad the two external 3.5-inch drives I have currently are dual interface, USB 2.0 or Firewire.
Re: Previous post
No deal. Mac-compatible network drives are few and far between in my neighborhood. I found only one that would work and it was 2x what it cost on the internet so I couldn’t go there.
If someone has successfully used a network drive through an old Airport Extreme Base Station, let us know…
The theoretical burst of USB2 is 480Mbps (megabits per second) versus Firewire 400’s 400Mbps.
I have a 500GB Western Digital MyBook Premium (USB2 and FW400). I’ve found that for transferring large files (video files ala Final Cut Pro) the USB2 transfers about 18-19 MBps (megabytes per second) versus the FW400’s transfer of about 32MBps. This is both on a MBP core duo 2.13 w/2GB memory and an internal 100GB 7200rpm drive and also a Mac mini core duo 1.8 w/2GB memory and an internal 120GB drive.
I have also seen the Firewire interface, even the FW400 and not even the FW800, advertized this way:
Has USB2 for maximum compatibility. Use Firewire for high performance needs.
Regardless of the speed of the wireless networking, in the case of this new AEBS, gigabit ethernet would be very sweet for all of your wired networked computers, and adding a Firewire port would, as has been pointed out, make it easier for people to attach their existing hard drives.
Regarding the different FW400 and FW800 connectors: I wonder if there were electrical issues with carrying that kind of bandwidth on the FW400 connectors and cables, necessitating a different connector. It would seem unlikely considering the ability to transport Ethernet 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1000 Mbps, and the 10Gbps all on RJ45, although it is a possibility.
“Linksys routers have had this for a long time. Way to “lead”, Apple…”
Apple is copying a lot from Cisco these days.
“Has USB2 for maximum compatibility. Use Firewire for high performance needs.”
Use USB2 for low cost and compatibility. Use eStata for low cost and high performance. Use Firewire 800 if you don’t know any better.
“It would seem unlikely considering the ability to transport Ethernet 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1000 Mbps, and the 10Gbps all on RJ45, although it is a possibility.”
Actually, 10 Gbps Ethernet is strictly optical, it just uses the ethernet protocol. Also, while it seems like 10/100 and Gigabit use the same cable, Cat5(e) is technically only rated up to 10/100 speeds; you are supposed to use Cat6 cable to carry Gigabit.
Slight correction:
Cat6a, which is currently unreleased, is supposed to support 10Gb/s.
I’m not sure if anyone is reading these comments anymore (last one dated Feb 15), but I’ll post anyways. From a hardware engineering perspective, it’s not practical to put in all of the technologies that the “wishful thinkers” above have moaned and groaned for.
Keep in mind that each additional technology added into the base station costs money and provides one more thing that can go wrong in the design. This results in optimization decisions that cut out fringe technologies. This is a consumer device targeted at home users, so Apple has made their design decisions accordingly.
For example, at the moment, home users have little need for Gigabit Ethernet and it has very poor penetration in the consumer space. Also, Gig-E chips and IP are relatively expensive compared to their slower counterparts. Look up the pricing on Gig-E routers (many run in the same price range as the AirPort Extreme 802.11n, without USB sharing and wireless).
eSATA is another fringe technology. It may become a major player in the future, but at the moment almost nobody has eSATA devices let alone an eSATA port on their computer. No way Apple is going to design something with such low adoption and high development cost into their device.
Not including firewire was also wise, both in terms of cost and engineering. Firewire was not designed as a host-centric system. As a result, devices have to negotiate amongst themselves for bus time. This results in very inefficient daisy-chaining of devices. USB on the otherhand is host-centric. Thus, it daisy-chains much better than Firewire. Although you may see better performance with Firewire with only a single device connected, USB will perform better when it comes to multiple devices connected together. Since this is what the AirPort Extreme purports to do, Apple’s design decision makes perfect sense.
This is of course a rather brief explanation of the logic behind engineering design decisions without delving much into engineering itself. You’ll have to do more digging if you want to get even more technical.