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Apple MB763LL/A AirPort Extreme Dual-band Base Station

Posted on | October 1, 2009 | 3 Comments

Apple MB763LL/A AirPort Extreme Dual-band Base Station

From the Manufacturer
The perfect wireless solution for home, school, and business, the AirPort Extreme Base Station blankets your space with a blazing-fast, secure wireless network opening up a world of possibilities for home entertainment, backups, printing, and more. This updated version of the AirPort Extreme now operates in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands simultaneously to ensure top performance for all your devices, and it provides a new Guest Networking option for easy Internet sharing. It also enables you to share your entire wireless network with up to 50 users at the same time as well as turn a USB hard drive into a shared drive that’s accessible wirelessly on your network and now over the Internet. New Features Some Wi-F (more…)

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Comments

3 Responses to “Apple MB763LL/A AirPort Extreme Dual-band Base Station”

  1. Kynan
    October 1st, 2009 @ 6:37 pm

    Hi All,

    True to my gadget envy, I acquired one of these dual band extreme base stations to see if they held up to the hype. Sure enough, Apple has improved an old mediocre product with a new more powerful hardware engine and improved software abilities.

    Features:
    802.11 A/B/G/N DUAL Band radios at 2.4ghz and 5ghz simultaneously.
    Gigabit Ethernet ports 1x Wan and 3x Lan.
    Guest wireless network.
    Disk sharing via USB connected drive.
    Access to shared disk via MobileMe (apple mobile me subscribers on os x).

    The box comes with the router, the power cord, software cd, and documentation….limited documentation.

    Time to test.

    Setup: Setup of an apple base station is unlike any other in that you cannot access the setup portal via your web browser. You must install the Apple Airport utility (both mac and windows) in order to set the router up. The software is built very well and provides the typical ease of use known to MAC users. You simply walk through a setup wizard and define simple options for your internet connection, your wireless network, etc, etc. NOTE: When setting up your wireless networks you are able to hit the options button so that you can define a 5ghz network as well (example, main wireless network called wifi, the 5ghz is called wifi (5ghz)). Very easy to setup and get going. You are also able to easily define a SECURED (wpa/wpa2) guest wireless network….which simply means that if you have a visitor they can use wi-fi but not get to any of the computers on your home network. Very Secure….and a great feature to boot.

    I was using the old Apple Base Station and kept switching between it and a d-link wireless n router…. I got one of these primarily due to dual band and guest access.

    Yes, there are other routers out there that can do this for a bit of a lower cost…but the elegance of the Apple Airport Utility make this a router that can be setup without too much hassle. The software will also identify problems in the setup and have you correct them before it uploads them to the router. These abilities alone make this a router for the non-geeks to be able to setup a robust networking environment at home.

    Wireless: As I mentioned before, I am comparing this to an older model apple base station that was single band and worked in the N range. Also compared this against a D-Link DIR-655 which is a 2.4ghz Wireless N router. The section on speed below will detail my wireless experience.

    Speed: I have Comcast cable modem service which gives me about 15-25mbps down and 2mbps up….I live in an area where there are probably 5-10 subscribers…so my speed is generally GREAT and never experiences a slow down. The first thing I do when I play with a new router is do a speed test….the new base station is comparable to the others and gets the same exact download/upload speeds over ethernet. There is one exception….using the wireless on this unit yielded BETTER results then the older model and the d-link. Normally when doing a speed test over wireless I get about 12-15mbps and 2mbps up….with this router I was able to successfully hit the 20mbps mark and 2mbps UP. WIN WIN!!!! So I figured that this may be an anomaly and thus proceeded to test a download from Microsoft – a 3.4gb file – which normally downloads anywhere between 900kpbs and 1.2mbps. Surprise…..with the new base station I stayed at 1.3mbps and it did not hiccup even once. The same was true when downloading via a wireless connection, albeit the speed was 1.0mbps….faster then I have ever gotten before. WIN WIN again!

    Disk Sharing – Not much to be said here…I attached a Western Digital USB hard drive 320gb and shared it. You simply go into the Airport Utility software and setup sharing of the hard drive and define which password should be used. You can either use the password for the router or setup a separate password to use with Disk Sharing. Speed is dependent upon wired or wireless. I tested while transferring 3 files…one was 2mb one was 100mb and one was a 2.5gb file. The two mb file of course went over before I could blink…the 100mb transferred over in about 3-4 minutes…the 2.5gb took about 15 minutes. The first transfer test was with ETHERNET connectivity. I did the same tests over wireless and found that the times doubled…naturally since wireless is a bit slower I expected that and had no issue with the times.

    Mobile-Me – I have not tested the mobile me features just yet but will be testing them in the days ahead and post my results here.

    So far I feel this router has hit perfection and will now find a permanent spot in my home…at least until something better hits.

    Please do leave me comments with suggestions on the review and or any questions you may have.

  2. Baden
    October 1st, 2009 @ 9:28 pm

    Thanks to the easy setup through AirPort Utility, I was up and running within minutes. This router has rock-solid wireless connections and excellent range. Operation has been flawless, no signal drops like with some competing routers. Unlike the previous generation MB053LL/A which could only operate in one band at a time, Apple has added a 2nd radio to this new unit that allows for allows for simultaneous dual-band operation- It’s like 2 routers in 1. This router allows you operate 5.0 Ghz-compatible devices on one network and 2.4 Ghz-compatible devices on the other, all from this one router. My wireless N-equipped aluminum MacBook connects to the 5.0 Ghz band and gets wireless local network speeds ranging from 200 mbps to 300 mbps. My other b/g devices connect to the slower 2.4 Ghz band. By default setup, there is one network name. When you connect to it, it will automatically join the band (2.4 Ghz or 5.0 Ghz) with the fastest connection speed that your wireless device supports. For example, a new wireless N-equipped MacBook will automatically connect via N to the 5.0 Ghz band. In addition, there is an option to assign a separate name to the 5.0 Ghz network which you can manually connect to if you so choose.

    The Guest Network feature is a nice addition and certainly sets this router apart from the competition. It allows you to give Internet access only to visitors simply by setting up a separate guest network in AirPort Utility. When a user connects to the guest network, the router uses a built-in algorithm to automatically join them to the band (2.4 Ghz or 5.0 Ghz) with the fastest connection speed.

    I connected a Brother HL-2140 laser printer to the usb port on the router and it worked perfectly, without having to install any print drivers.

    I highly recommend this router.

  3. Liluye
    October 2nd, 2009 @ 1:40 am

    I had wrestled with other wireless routers for years the last being a D-link Now my 4th is this Apple. I have a mixed network of wired and wireless, 2 Macs, Apple TV, a Ruko, and 2 PCs. It took less than 5 min. to network each Mac, Ruko and the Apple TV. The PCs took about 6 min because Bonjour needed to loaded. Even my Asus netbook was simple. I could not believe how easy and now I have a 2 band (both bands are used by the Apple products) encrypted, 2 network system running at > 300 mbits instead of 54. It increased the reliability of the cable internet but not its speed (most cable internet is very fast but not that fast. What it does do is increase my transfer speed of photos and music between computers . I was almost disappointed I did not get to fiddle with the system just a little more. Took me five minutes this morning to add a USB hard drive. I think next I’ll ad a hub and a printer or maybe more hard drives – nice choices