Crave

"I'll give you two guesses as to this product's identity. Is it the Base Station or Time Capsule? Only the astute among you will know for sure.

(Credit: Apple)

Along with the major Apple announcements that took place Tuesday, Apple also--quite stealthily, I might add--announced upgraded performance, specs, and support for both its Time Capsule and Airport Extreme Base Station.

Time Capsule received the most updates, with Apple claiming that with the new technologies and refinements added to both Time Capsule and the Time Machine software, backing up using Snow Leopard is up to "60 percent faster than before."

That number is based on internal testing done by Apple comparing a new preproduction (unreleased) Time Capsule with the version released earlier this year.

Apple also claims that by using the latest 802.11n wireless technology, you'll see "up to five times the Wi-Fi performance and up to twice the range of 802.11g wireless networks."

This, also based on Apple testing comparing both Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme Base Station to "Apple's 802.11g products." The company doesn't specify which products it compares them to, however.

Finally, Apple claims that improvements to both Time Capsule's and the Airport Extreme Base Station's antenna design can give "up to 50 percent better performance and up to 25 percent better range than with the previous-generation Time Capsule and Airport Extreme base Station."

This performance is based on Apple testing comparing the Time Capsule and Airport based Station to "Apple's 802.11n products." Again, although we can safely assume they're basing the comparison on apples to apples test results on the previous versions of the versions of the same hardware, we can't be certain.

We'll of course be conducting our own testing as soon as we get these updated versions of the products in for review. It'll be interesting to see how close our performance numbers match up with theirs.

According to Apple's site, both new versions of the hardware are shipping now.

The new Base Station still has only three Ethernet ports. Most routers have four.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

I finally got a chance to review Apple's first true dual-band Wireless-N router, the new Airport Extreme Base Station.

The new router, like the previous model, makes a great home router for novice and especially Mac users. It incorporates MobileMe for remote access and administration, offers fast wireless speeds, and has a very good range.

Savvy and Windows users, however, will find a lot of networking features missing, including the very popular Wi-Fi Protected Setup, the capability to filter Web sites, and access to manage the router's setting via a Web browser.

The Airport Extreme Base Station's great and eye-catching design will make a lot of you fall in love with it. However, if truth be told, it's not a router for everyone.

To find out more, read the in-depth review at CNET Reviews.

Updated at 10:05 a.m. on Wednesday: Apple confirmed that the new devices are true dual-band, meaning both bands (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and both networks (primary and Guest) offer 802.11n.

Without much ado, Apple has just rather silently upgraded its networking products, including the Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme, with two significant features: dual-band wireless-N and guest networking.

The new Airport Extreme Base Station

(Credit: Apple)

At its Web site, Apple states that its new simultaneous dual-band Wi-Fi allows for maximum range and compatibility, as the AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule work simultaneously on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

However, it's unclear whether or not both bands offer Wireless-N (true dual-band) or only one band offers Wireless-N while the other offers Wireless-G (802.11g, hybrid dual-band).

True dual-band networking has been available for a long time and can be found in many routers such as the D-Link DIR-825 or the Linksys WRT610N. Hybrid dual-band can be found in the Netgear 3300.

Guest networking (or Guest Zone) has also been found in many routers from other vendors, most Wireless-N routers from D-Link have this feature. Basically it allows you to set up a separate wireless network that's isolated from your main local network. This is a great feature if you want to allows guests to access the Internet without being able to access your local network resources, such as your computer, printers, or the router's settings.

Other than that, both the new Airport Extreme and the Time Capsules have about the same features and design as their predecessors. The new Time Capsule also comes in 500GB and 1TB versions. This is slightly disappointing since you now can easily find hard drives that offer capacities up to 2TB for reasonable prices.

These new products are now available at Apple's Store with prices that won't reflect the current state of the economy.

The wireless backup feature that disappeared from Apple's promotional copy for its Leopard operating system has snuck in through the back door.

Macworld did a little poking around with the recently released Mac OS X software update for "Time Machine and Airport" and realized that Time Machine now recognizes a generic USB hard drive plugged into an Airport Extreme base station, allowing Airport Extreme users to wirelessly back up their notebooks with Leopard's Time Machine. You need to mount the external hard drive using Finder to make sure Time Machine can see it, according to Macworld.

Time Machine will now work wirelessly with MacBooks after a software update.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple had promoted this aspect of Time Machine--wireless backups via Airport Extreme and a USB hard drive--in its advertising for Leopard, the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X released in October. But at the last minute, that capability was pulled from Apple's ads, and Leopard early adopters found they were unable to use Time Machine with a notebook unless they plugged a USB hard drive directly into the notebook, or if they set up a complicated storage-area network. It was never clear what led to the disappearance of that feature, but perhaps the code just simply wasn't ready for prime time.

In January, Apple announced Time Capsule, a combination USB hard drive/wireless base station that allowed for wireless backups. But at $299 or $499, depending on the storage capacity, it's a pricey option for people who already own Airport Extreme and USB hard drives.

Time Capsule is a pretty easy way of getting the wireless backups up and running if you don't already have a wireless access point or USB hard drive. But if you bought Time Capsule to replace your Airport Extreme access points and USB hard drives, well, um, turns out you didn't need to do that.

Apple released on Wednesday a security update for the AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n.

The Firmware 7.3.1 update addresses the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) vulnerability detailed in CVE-2008-1012.

Apple said there is an input validation issue in the way AirPort Extreme Base Station validates AFP requests. A maliciously crafted AFP request may cause file sharing to become unresponsive. This issue does not affect Time Capsule or AirPort Express.

The update for the Fast Ethernet version of Airport Extreme and the Gigabit Ethernet editions is available on from Apple support. Earlier this week Apple released an update for its Safari browser, along with an ominbus security update for Mac OS X.

Apple credits Alex deVries for reporting the AFP vulnerability.

If you want to use the Time Machine feature in Mac OS X Leopard to set up automatic backups, you'll have to find a networking cable.

In the advance marketing material for Leopard, which goes on sale later today, Apple had promoted the ability to connect an external USB hard drive to an AirPort Extreme wireless router (Airport Disk) and use Time Machine to wirelessly back up the hard drives of Macbooks scattered around a home. Time Machine, one of the more universally liked features in Leopard (click for CNET's review), is designed to make backing up and restoring files much easier than before.

Time Machine, being demonstrated by Apple's Scott Forstall at the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference, won't work with external hard drives connected to Apple's Airport wireless routers.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

But Macworld's Dan Frakes (who has an excellent spin move to the basket) noticed earlier this week that Apple had pulled the language advertising the use of an AirPort Disk from the Time Machine promotional copy. AppleInsider then verified that its copy of Leopard did not allow the use of an Airport Disk to do wireless backups, forcing you to physically connect the USB drive to a Macbook or Macbook Pro to make sure the backup operation takes place. Time Machine can also back up data to another Mac running Leopard that is set up for file sharing, a server running Leopard, or one of Apple's Xsan storage devices, but casual Mac users are much more likely to back up to one of the many external hard drives available.

That's certainly not the end of the world, but it's somewhat inconvenient if you're used to using your notebook on a wireless network at all times. Posters on AppleInsider's forums speculated that backing up an entire hard disk over a wireless network would take forever, even at 802.11n speeds of over 100Mbps, and that seems to make sense. But certainly Apple was ready to go forward with the feature up until the last minute, so it must have been convinced as recently as a few weeks ago that wireless backups wouldn't be an issue.

The most likely scenario seems to be that Apple pulled it from the final release of Leopard at the last minute because the software simply wasn't ready. The company can add support for Airport Disks at a later date with a software update, but Leopard early adopters will have to wait.

(Credit: Apple Computer)

Amid all the exciting phone and TV announcements that Steve Jobs made at today's Macworld keynote address was an aside that probably deserved a little more attention: the latest iteration of the AirPort Extreme base station supports the Draft N standard. The new base station not only supports the current version of the standard, but it's also backward-compatible with 802.11a/b/g, so it operates in both the 5GHz and the 2.4GHz bands. While backward-compatibility with 802.11b/g is common, compatibility with 11a is less so. Having 802.11a support is great because you can choose to operate the base station in the 5GHz band in order to reduce network interference.

The back of the new AirPort Extreme base station

(Credit: Apple Computer)

A peek at the back of base station (well, a peek at a picture of the back) shows one WAN port and three LAN ports (four LAN ports are more common on most wireless routers), though to the disappointment of many fans, none of them are Gigabit Ethernet ports. There is, however, a USB port for networking an external hard drive or a USB printer (or both if you add a USB hub). As far as wireless security goes, the new AirPort Extreme base station supports WPA/WPA2 and 128-bit WEP.

Apple has changed the physical design of the base station, too: it employs the Mac Mini/Apple TV design, though it's slightly shorter than the Mac Mini. The Draft 11N AirPort Extreme will ship in February for $180, in line with pricing for Draft 11N routers from the likes of Linksys and Belkin.