AirPort and AirPort Extreme are local area wireless networking products from Apple Inc. based on the IEEE 802.11 standard (also known as Wi-Fi).
AirPort and AirPort Extreme in common usage can refer to the protocol (802.11b, and 802.11g and 802.11n, respectively), the expansion card or the base station.
In Japan, the line of products is marketed under the brand AirMac due to previous registration by I-O DATA.
Overview
AirPort debuted on July 21, 1999 at the Macworld Expo in New York City with Steve Jobs picking up an iBook supposedly to give the cameraman a better shot as he surfed the Web. The applause quickly built as people realized there were no wires. The initial offering included an optional expansion card for Apple's new line of iBook notebooks, plus an AirPort Base Station. The AirPort card (a repackaged Proxim—ORiNOCO Gold Card PC Card adapter) was later added as an option for almost all of Apple's product line, including PowerBooks, eMacs, iMacs, and Power Macs. Only Xserves do not have it as a standard or optional feature. The original AirPort system allowed transfer rates up to 11 Mbit/s and was commonly used to share Internet access and files between multiple computers.
On January 7, 2003, Apple introduced AirPort Extreme , based on the 802.11g specification. AirPort Extreme allows theoretical peak data transfer rates of up to 54 Mbit/s, and is fully backward-compatible with existing 802.11b wireless network cards and base stations. Several of Apple's desktop computers and portable computers, including the MacBook Pro, MacBook, Mac Mini, and iMac shipped with an AirPort Extreme (802.11g) card as standard. All other modern Macs have an expansion slot for the card. AirPort and AirPort Extreme cards are not physically compatible: AirPort Extreme cards cannot be installed in older Macs, and AirPort cards cannot be installed in newer Macs. The original AirPort card was discontinued in June 2004.
On June 7, 2004, Apple released the AirPort Express Base Station as a "Swiss Army knife" product. It can be used as a portable travel router, using the same AC connectors as on Apple's AC adapters; as an audio streaming device, with both line-level and optical audio outputs; and as a USB printer sharing device, through its USB host port.
On January 9, 2007, Apple unveiled a new AirPort Extreme (802.11 Draft-N) Base Station , which introduced 802.11 Draft-N to the Apple AirPort product line. This implementation of 802.11 Draft-N can operate in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz ISM bands, and has modes that make it compatible with 802.11b/g and 802.11b/a. The number of Ethernet ports was increased to four—one nominally for WAN, three for LAN, but all can be used in bridged mode. A USB port was included for printers and other USB devices. The Ethernet ports were later updated to Gigabit Ethernet on all ports. The styling is similar to that of the Mac Mini and Apple TV.
On January 15, 2008, Apple introduced Time Capsule , an AirPort Extreme (802.11 Draft-N) with an internal hard drive. The device includes software to allow any computer running a reasonably recent version of Mac OS or Windows to access the disk as a shared volume. Macs running Mac OS X 10.5 and later, which includes the Time Machine feature, can use the Time Capsule as a wireless backup device, allowing automatic, untethered backups of the client computer. As an access point, the unit is otherwise equivalent to an AirPort Extreme (802.11 Draft-N), with four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a USB port for printer and disk sharing.
On March 17, 2008, Apple released an updated AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11 Draft-N 2x2 radio. All other features (analog and digital optical audio out, single Ethernet port, USB port for printer sharing ) remained the same. At the time, it was the least expensive ($99) device to handle both frequency bands (2.4GHz and 5GHz) in 2x2 802.11 Draft-N.
On March 3, 2009, Apple unveiled AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule products with simultaneous dual-band 802.11 Draft-N radios. This allows full 802.11 Draft-N 2x2 communication in both 802.11 Draft-N bands at the same time.
On October 20, 2009, Apple unveiled the updated AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule products with antenna improvements (the 5.8Ghz model) resulting in wireless performance gains of both speed and range, also stated is a resulting performance improvement/time reduction on Time Capsule backups of up to 60%.
All current AirPort base stations and cards work with third-party base stations and wireless cards that conform to the 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11 Draft-N networking standards. It is not uncommon to see wireless networks composed of several types of AirPort base station serving old and new Macintosh, Microsoft Windows and Linux systems. Apple's software drivers for AirPort Extreme also support some Broadcom and Atheros-based PCI Wireless adapters when fitted to Power Mac computers. Due to the nature of draft-n hardware, there is no assurance that the new model will work with 802.11 Draft-N routers and access devices from other manufacturers.
Base stations
An AirPort base station is used to connect AirPort-enabled computers to the Internet, each other, a wired LAN, and/or other devices.
AirPort
The original AirPort (known as Graphite ) features a modem and an Ethernet port. It employs a Lucent WaveLAN Silver PC Card as the Radio, and uses an embedded AMD Elan processor. It was released July 21, 1999. The Graphite AirPort Base Station is functionally identical to the Lucent RG-1000 wireless base station and can run the same firmware. Due to the original firmware-locked limitations of the Silver card, the unit can only accept 40-bit WEP encryption. Later aftermarket tweaks can enable 128bit WEP on the Silver card. Aftermarket Linux firmware has been developed for these units to extend their useful service life.
A second generation model (known as Dual Ethernet or Snow ) was introduced on November 13, 2001. It features a second Ethernet port when compared to the Graphite design, allowing for a shared Internet connection with both wired and wireless clients. Also new was the ability to connect to America Online's dial-up service—a feature unique to Apple base stations. This model is based on Motorola's PowerPC 855 processor and contained a fully functional original Airport Card, which can be removed and used in any compatible Macintosh computer.
AirPort Express Base Station
The AirPort Express is a simplified and compact AirPort Extreme base station. It allows only up to 10 networked users, and includes a new feature called AirTunes. It did not replace the AirPort Extreme base station. The original version (M9470LL/A) was introduced by Apple on June 7, 2004 and includes an analog/optical audio mini-jack output, a USB port for remote printing, and a single Ethernet port.
The main processor in the AirPort Express (802.11g version) is a Broadcom BCM4712KFB wireless networking chipset. This has a 200 MHz MIPS processor built in. The audio is handled by a Texas Instruments Burr-Brown PCM2705 16-bit digital-to-analog converter.
The device can be used as an Ethernet-to-wireless bridge under certain wireless configurations.
An updated version (MB321LL/A) featuring the faster 802.11 Draft-N draft specification and operation in either of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands was released on March 17, 2008 with almost all other features identical. The revised unit includes an 802.11a/n (5 GHz) mode, which allows adding Draft N to an existing 802.11b/g network without disrupting existing connections, while preserving the increased throughput that Draft N can provide. Up to 10 wireless units can connect to this AirPort Express.
Both versions allow you to extend the range of your network, or to join as a dedicated printer and audio server.
An often overlooked feature of the AirPort Express is that its 3.5" stereo mini-jack connection also functions as a TOSLINK optical digital connector when used with an appropriate adaptor, allowing connection to an external DAC or amplifier with internal DAC. This allows CDs ripped in iTunes in Apple Lossless format to stream to the AirPort Express which will in turn output a bitstream which is bit-for-bit identical to the original CD (provided volume adjustments, Sound Check and Sound Enhancer are switched off for playback in iTunes). DTS encoded CDs ripped to Apple Lossless audio files which decode as digital noise in iTunes will playback correctly when the AirPort Express is connected via TOSLINK to a DTS compatible amplifier/decoder.
AirTunes
AirTunes allows an AirPort-enabled computer with the iTunes music player to send a stream of music to multiple (three to six, in typical conditions) stereos connected to an AirPort Express or Apple TV.
The AirPort Express' streaming media capabilities use Apple's Remote Audio Output Protocol (RAOP), a proprietary variant of RTSP/RTP. Using WDS-bridging, the AirPort Express can allow AirTunes functionality (as well as Internet access, file and print sharing, etc.) across a larger distance in a mixed environment of wired and up to 1
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