Apple today released AirPort Utility 5.3.2 for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and AirPort Utility Setup 5.3.2 for Windows.
AirPort Utility 5.3.2 offers “wireless networking that works with most Wi-Fi enabled devices, including Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod touch, and more.”
AirPort Utility 5.3.2 is available via Software Update and also as standalone installers.
More info here.
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Intel only?
/sarcasm
“AirPort Utility 5.3.2 offers wireless networking that works with most Wi-Fi enabled devices, including Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod touch, and more.”
So is it Airport that creates a wireless network, or the Airport utility…..
Can we have a typo check please?
I have random comments at this time.
1. Reginald: The movie will be late.
2. Kim: Yes, she is.
3. George: $4.8m – it’s official.
4. Google, Yahoo, Apple. In that order.
I really hope that Apple improves the code on the AirPort Extreme Router. if you look at what it does, it is still really crude. It is the ‘Vista’ of Apple Products. First, There is no QoS and all traffic is considered Best Effort. For those who feel that isn’t important, try to place a SIP VoIP call (i.e. Vonage or Comcast Digital Voice), now start a large file transfer, or pretty much anything Bit Torrent, and the voice quality goes from PESQ 4.0 (Toll Quality) to 1.5 (Crap). If the Airport Extreme was a modern router, we could setup QoS and Voice Traffic would get priority (Or what else the user wishes). I am not expecting it to be a Cisco, but it is clear that AirPort Extreme is substandard for Triple Play. Also, the DHCP lease acquisition times is one of the worse in the industry. I would rater not use LinkSucks or Dumb-Link, but at least they have modern capabilities. I thought Apple was supposed to be the BMW of what ever they do. Well, here, they fail.
@StocktonMac,
Apparently you have forgotten that Apple’s mission is not to be a BMW, but rather to have technology that is unencumbered by 1,300 controls and preferences just to make the darn thing work (think Windoze).
Sounds to me that you have a special need and the other 99.995% of AirPort users couldn’t care less. Further, they don’t want the added complexity of supporting your needs. If there’s a product out there that does what you need, by all means buy it.
Life is full of trade-offs, this is just one of them.
this update made my girlfriend’s bra un-snappier.
thank you, Apple.
Works for me. This appears to be an update of the utility only, so it will not affect the operation of the Airport Base Station.
@StocktonMac
Vonage = SIP “Like”
Current Comcast Digital Voice = MGCP (for now)
The two are VERY different. For MGCP Digital Voice, the Cable-Modem/eMTA and Cable Company Headend equipment handle QoS. MGCP is given priority over regular data traffic, while all other data (including any SIP) is Best effort.
Also, for current MGCP VoIP, LAN QoS should be pretty much a non-issue, as there are no MGCP VoIP connections outside of the eMTA device. The eMTA only delivers analog RJ11 jacks to provide telephony service, which mimics twisted-pair analog service via the eMTA, and terminates at the eMTA. Plugging in a router (like Airport) into the Data Ethernet port of the eMTA has no bearing on any LAN QoS at all in that case. If voice quality is diminished, it is due to bandwidth capacity between the eMTA and the Headend (or after), and has nothing to do with LAN QoS.
The case for SIP is indeed different, and as you mention above. I’m certain that as we begin to see convergence of Voice and Data into DATA connections on the LAN side, we’ll begin to see the HW to support it.
JustAJoe, you’re obviously a smart guy, but you illustrate a point about the complexity of the communication/networking/wireless protocol world. For cripes sake, there’s only about 3 recognizable English words in your entire post.
I’m not exactly a newbie here, with an Airport Extreme and two Airport Expresses feeding wireless signals to 5 computers and one AppleTV, but if I have a problem with my network, it is so difficult to troubleshoot the problem. It’s all complicated acronyms and settings with no explanations.
My internet connection has been dropping out intermittently on all my Macs for the last month or two. There are numerous posts in the Apple Discussion Forums about problems with Airport/Airport Express after updating to Leopard 10.5.3. But I have had occasional troubles with my DSL modem and/or DSL signal in the past, so I can’t figure out what’s causing my internet to drop out intermittently.
If you ask me, the complexity of wireless/networking protocol is the achilles heel of the entire computing industry. It creates headaches for the average or slightly above average user like myself, and must create complete havoc for the inexperienced user.
MW: “Such” is life I guess.
@solid
My ISP monitors connections, so they have been able to verify dropouts in their service to me. My house is well over a mile from the nearest switch, so they can’t deliver reliable 24 Mbit/sec ADSL over the phone line. When they try to deliver 24 I get 9 or 10 max, and when they try to deliver 8 I get 6 or 7. When we back down to 8 Mbit the dropouts disappear. In our case the greater reliability of the slower connection makes it much less frustrating.
Well, none the less, Start a VoIP session, transfer a file and you notice the quality get real bad on the Airport. Simply put, Apple should at least allow the user to shape traffic by source port. My Gosh, my $39 Linksucks can do that. VoIP and Video is very important now, and apple needs to pony up….
Oh, and with MGCP. If it’s Packetized, poor QoS can harm performance with excessive Jitter or packet loss.
Problem with Airport is that if a PQOS backbit second-level packet burn occurs at the same time as the incoming PL-digit voicefeed, then there is NO WAY that you can still download simple files over a VPN, even with an XML translator linked to the auto-fade cross-over link on the ‘out’ section.
I was a bit surprised that Apple didnt do anything about this until I realised that I was the only person in the Universe who knew what the fuck I was talking about.
So I went to pub and had a beer.
@Charlotte Rampling’s Bum.
To Solid.
I to have had similar problems in the past with my Airports and DSL modem.
I put a 5 port switch in between my first Airport and DSL modem. That way I could tell if it was my modem going link dead on me or if it was the Airport playing up.
Let’s hope they fix the dropout problem…it’s a pain to see my MBP lose the signal to an airport 5 feet away and have to reacquire…
@StocktonMac:
“Oh, and with MGCP. If it’s Packetized, poor QoS can harm performance with excessive Jitter or packet loss.”
That is correct. But in the current MGCP PacketCable deployment, LAN QoS simply does not matter, because (except for some small trials) NO voice is traversing the LAN as IP packets. It is only IP (carried over DOCSIS) between the eMTA device and the Cable Company headend. On the customer side, the Cable Company simply delivers regular RJ11 jacks (Analog) telephony via the eMTA, into which the end-user plugs in a regular telephone.
So the “common point” in the home is the eMTA. eMTAs have a Data port (Ethernet) and two RJ11 (Analog) jacks. The eMTA takes the regular analog telephone, and translates it to MGCP (typically with g.711 codec) ONLY between itself and the headend. Any router is connected PAST this point in the home, and confines LAN IP traffic between itself (the router Ethernet port) and other IP LAN devices, and then sends it off to the eMTA Ethernet port. In this case, Router (or Airport) QoS on the LAN would do nothing to help MGCP Voice traffic, because physically, the MGCP can only be prioritized at the eMTA.
All Cable Companies do prioritize MGCP PacketCable VoIP over all other data traffic in this way between the eMTA and Headend. PacketCable MGCP gets priority, all other traffic is “Best effort”.
So in the case above, any bandwidth contention at the eMTA between Voice (on RJ11-MGCP) and “other” data (on Ethernet port) will always provide priority to the Voice. If there is a problem, it is on the WAN (DOCSIS) side of the network. (This is typically due to either out-of-spec RF on the DOCSIS physical layer, [which leads to packetloss, which is MUCH more noticeable when doing MGCP VoIP than just regular data], or not enough bandwidth capacity on the Cable Node. Both are typical reasons)
If anyone is having problems with Digital Voice, the first thing to check is your DOCSIS RF levels. They should be:
Downstream Power: between -15dBmv and +15dBmV
Upstream Power: LESS THAN 55dBmV
(This is for 16QAM/ 3.2MHzCW modulation, for 64QAM it needs to be less than 53dBmV!)
Downstream CNR: NOT LESS THAN 35dB
Upstream CNR: NOT LESS THAN 25dB
Not meeting these specs WILL cause packetloss, and (depending on the severity), it is VERY possible it might only be noticeable on Voice.
If on the other hand it is a capacity issue, there is really no remedy until large scale deployments of DOCSIS 3.0 begin to arrive over the next year or so…
JustAJoe.
All this talk about routers and such. Does anyone know exactly WHAT this update does/fixes?
How about this annoyance:
Add a MAC address to the access list on an AE (in my case a Time Capsule) and the whole thing has to restart.
Ridiculous. That’s more like Windows than OSX.
What the?????? Whats all this jibberish. You all need a tall glass of Camels Milk.
My dogsis won’t bark or lick since I tried to transfer my packet to her by plugging my router into her ethernal port.
@ StocktonMac
If you have suggestions, please log them at Apple’s Feedback site.
VOIP is, and always has been, crap. Get a cell phone and quit your bitching. Or quit trying to bittorrent while you’re talking on your internet phone.
wow
you guys should try towertone’s “common point” trick with your girlfriends by an at-eMpTA to maybe get your headends upstream and downstream as it may lead to glorious packetloss and bandwidth be damned!
it’s how you use it anyway rrright? …he he