Apple's new 802.11n AirPort Extreme
After a lot of waiting for the 802.11n standard to be ratified Apple finally released a new 802.11n AirPort Extreme. matrushkaka and I have had a lot of problems getting iChat AV to work, even with a well-behaved router running special firmware and UPnP, even after taking NAT out of the equation entirely by putting my machine in the DMZ. Skype works, but only iChat's framerate is fast enough for matrushkaka to read my lips so we're stuck with this fussy, problematic solution. I was dubious, but I thought we'd give an AirPort router a try, mostly because we never seem to have any problem connecting with haineux (who has an AirPort at home) no matter where we're trying from.
The dick-in-a-box arrived midweek and I've been using it for a little while now. arstechnica_syn did a good write-up already, so I'll just cover the surprises.
Range is slightly improved, but not twice as much. At work I can still ping our 'g' router from 53 meters away, and the dick-in-a-box extends this range to 82m (+54%). In urban San Francisco where there's a lot more noise in that spectrum I can ping our 'g' router from 32m and the dick-in-a-box from 52m (+62%).
Miracle of miracles, iChat actually works, reliably, everywhere, even connecting with people on super-problematic networks that have never worked before. Maybe it's because the AirPort does not support UPnP, it uses NAT-PMP, an IETF Standard. Someone tells me that this is because UPnP is a big complicated protocol where you have to send a big complicated XML-formatted chunk of data data which is a lot of work to implement and fully qualify, whereas NAT-PMP is a straightforward 2-datagram request/response exchange in UDP which Apple Engineers think is a far more reasonable solution for the problem it addresses. (I was going to go off on a big rant about why Apple ignoring an existing standard and pushing its own standard is a bad thing, but then I realized that it's more complicated than that, so I'm going to shut my mouth until I've had some time to think about this a while longer.) Anyway, all that NATPMP-not-UPnP means that Azureus performance will suck unless you enable the NATPMP extension. Ethically I have problems with rewarding Apple's broken, buggy software with more purchases, but pragmatically it's nice to know that I'll be able to reliably talk with the midget as long as one of us is back at the house. I remain baffled how this router can perform a trick that DD-WRT cannot perform, and quietly wonder whether Apple is using undocumented or otherwise broken functionality to make sure they're the only ones in the game with a working solution.
Favorite feature: the signal strength indicator showing a graph of everyone connected to the access point. Pretty cool. DD-WRT has a similar feature, but it only shows bars not a graph.
Minor disappointment: does not support AirTunes. I'll need to buy a second AirPort if I want to stream music to my stereo now that S&P have taken theirs away.
Somewhat puzzling nitpick: The first 802.11b AP was called an AirPort. The 802.11g AP was called an AirPort Extreme. Isn't this product even more extreme? Shouldn't the name reflect this: " AirPort: Things Are Pretty Extreme In This Router" or something?
The dick-in-a-box arrived midweek and I've been using it for a little while now. arstechnica_syn did a good write-up already, so I'll just cover the surprises.
Range is slightly improved, but not twice as much. At work I can still ping our 'g' router from 53 meters away, and the dick-in-a-box extends this range to 82m (+54%). In urban San Francisco where there's a lot more noise in that spectrum I can ping our 'g' router from 32m and the dick-in-a-box from 52m (+62%).
Miracle of miracles, iChat actually works, reliably, everywhere, even connecting with people on super-problematic networks that have never worked before. Maybe it's because the AirPort does not support UPnP, it uses NAT-PMP, an IETF Standard. Someone tells me that this is because UPnP is a big complicated protocol where you have to send a big complicated XML-formatted chunk of data data which is a lot of work to implement and fully qualify, whereas NAT-PMP is a straightforward 2-datagram request/response exchange in UDP which Apple Engineers think is a far more reasonable solution for the problem it addresses. (I was going to go off on a big rant about why Apple ignoring an existing standard and pushing its own standard is a bad thing, but then I realized that it's more complicated than that, so I'm going to shut my mouth until I've had some time to think about this a while longer.) Anyway, all that NATPMP-not-UPnP means that Azureus performance will suck unless you enable the NATPMP extension. Ethically I have problems with rewarding Apple's broken, buggy software with more purchases, but pragmatically it's nice to know that I'll be able to reliably talk with the midget as long as one of us is back at the house. I remain baffled how this router can perform a trick that DD-WRT cannot perform, and quietly wonder whether Apple is using undocumented or otherwise broken functionality to make sure they're the only ones in the game with a working solution.
Favorite feature: the signal strength indicator showing a graph of everyone connected to the access point. Pretty cool. DD-WRT has a similar feature, but it only shows bars not a graph.
Minor disappointment: does not support AirTunes. I'll need to buy a second AirPort if I want to stream music to my stereo now that S&P have taken theirs away.
Somewhat puzzling nitpick: The first 802.11b AP was called an AirPort. The 802.11g AP was called an AirPort Extreme. Isn't this product even more extreme? Shouldn't the name reflect this: " AirPort: Things Are Pretty Extreme In This Router" or something?