Apple M8799LL/A AirPort Extreme Base Station with Modem and Antenna Port

The AirPort Extreme Base Station with Modem and Antenna Port is compatible with the industry-standard 802.11b wireless networking protocol, which means all AirPort products, as well as Wi-Fi certified 802.11b wireless products. For higher performance you will need to have both the Airport Extreme Card and the AirPort Extreme Base Station. The range of AirPort Extreme is up to 50 feet at 54 Mbps and up to 150 feet at 11 Mbps. The Base Station can be used in conjunction with an Ethernet connection (such as with a cable modem, DSL modem, or Ethernet network) through the integrated Ethernet port, or with a telephone line through a modem.

The AirPort Extreme Base Station with Modem and Antenna Port also supports USB or Ethernet wireless printer sharing. Just plug in a compatible USB or Ethernet printer and with Mac OS X on your computer you can quickly and easily print. You can use the new USB port to attach a USB printer or use the 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN port to plug in an Ethernet printer directly into the base station.

With the new AirPort Extreme Base Station with Modem and Antenna Port, up to 50 users can work and play on the Internet simultaneously up to 150 feet away from an Ethernet connection or a phone line. The Base Station comes equipped with a built-in firewall to protect sensitive data on your computer and the ability to secure transmissions with support for 128-bit encryption.

The AirPort Extreme Base Station with Modem and Antenna Port lets you manage the range of your wireless network. An external antenna port is provided for you to attach an external antenna. There are two types of antennas available: an omni-directional and a directional, which extend the range of the AirPort Extreme base station. There is also a software feature that allows you on reduce the size of your wireless network, down to just a single room for extra privacy.

Customer Reviews
Cross-Platform bliss,
By Vano Chu "grills year-round" (NJ)
Got this primarily so we could work anywhere in the house on our PC laptops. Granted, a Linksys wireless router would have been cheaper, but the Airport Extreme also serves as a wireless print server and that (plus the fact that our primary computer is a Mac) was what sealed the deal for us. Our cabling setup is:
Cable modem -> Linksys Wired 4-Port Router -> Airport Extreme -> Lexmark Optra E312L

Our laptops use Linksys Wireless-G cards and get good reception throughout the house. Our G4 and PS2 are hooked directly into the wired Linksys Router for their connectivity. The trick to using it with an existing router is to turn off the NAT addressing feature of the Airport Extreme so that it acts only as an Ethernet "bridge" to the wireless computers; the Linksys router assigns all the IP addresses for everything on the system including the PC laptops. The PCs can print wirelessly to the laser printer via the Airport and so can the Mac. Bonus!

Setup was very quick - about 15 minutes to get everything plugged in. The hard part was getting the security set up correctly (and yes, you'd better secure your wireless network) as the format for passwords was different on the Mac vs. PC platforms. Had to do some Web searches to find out how to make them speak the same language (hex). Has worked flawlessly since then. If I had to do it over, would buy it again in a heartbeat.

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