OK, my wireless router is becoming increasingly less reliable, and am thinking of moving over to an Apple product as part of my goal to rid my home of PCs. I'm a little confused on a couple of things. First, do both of these function as wireless routers, or just the Extreme?

Also, how does the thing work where I beam music around the house? My current wireless router is on the third floor of my house in the office -- a room I find myself using increasingly less now that I have my MacBook, but that's still where the router needs to go because it's hardwired to the PC, and that's where the cable comes in for the internet. If I put the Extreme up there, could I then buy an Express and connect that to my stereo? If I buy two or three Express stations and attach them to different stereo set-ups, will the same music go to both of them at the same time -- so I could basically pipe music throughout my whole house?

Finally, I have a drive that I use to backup my system via Time Machine. If I attach that drive to one of the Airport Base stations, will it still work as a backup drive?

Thx for any info...

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

If I'm not wrong ... you need a wireless router or Airport Extreme. Express only works as a repeater.

You can pipe music wherever your Express is plugged in. iTunes let you select multiple speakers.

You can't just plug a hard drive into Airport Extreme and use it for storage. What you want for that is network storage or NAS. The box comes with I/O ability that you will need to read/write to your hard drive, which the Airport Extreme would be lacking.

Or I could be way wrong :what:lol:

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

NAS :RockOn:

Carry on...

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

Oh the cool thing about some NAS is they come with bittorrent clients, so if you're a downloader, you don't need your macbook on, leave the NAS to download 24/7. And when you're out, you can log into the client and control it from any web browsers.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

OK, I'm an idiot -- NAS? :what

And what is the difference between network storage and having a hard drive attached to the router. When you attach a drive to the router, does it not become network storage? I'm confused.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

NAS = network attached storage. You can't just attach a hard drive to a router because for you to read/write files to it, you usually need an operating system such as Windows, Dos, Linux, or Mac OS. Read/write operations are the most basic processes in an operating system.

A hard drive is only the physical medium to store and retrieve data. You need something in between to read the data and 'interpret' it for you.

Hmmm rough analogy: Imagine you have a recorder and you recorded someone speaking in a foreign language. The recorder stores it for you, but you still need a translator to help you make sense of it.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

[URL="http://www.applegazette.com/software/airport-extreme-update-adds-usb-hard-drive-back-up-function/"]Sorry dude, apparently you CAN attach an external hdd to your Airport Extreme[/URL].

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

[QUOTE=feather;600275][URL="http://www.applegazette.com/software/airport-extreme-update-adds-usb-hard-drive-back-up-function/"]Sorry dude, apparently you CAN attach an external hdd to your Airport Extreme[/URL].[/QUOTE]

That is bad-ass. Apple store, here I come...

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

AE is a breeze to set up.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

I use the express as my only router and it works like a charm.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

It's all a breeze. ;)

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

[QUOTE=miketpoto;600312]I use the express as my only router and it works like a charm.[/QUOTE]

I'd be totally behind this if I didn't need the ethernet ports. As I understand it, the ethernet port on the Express is input only, right?

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

[QUOTE=toasty;600355]I'd be totally behind this if I didn't need the ethernet ports. As I understand it, the ethernet port on the Express is input only, right?[/QUOTE]

yup.

Get a switch.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

Hmmm does AE + external hdd only work with Time Machine? Can you manually copy files onto the external hdd?

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

[quote=miketpoto;600312]I use the express as my only router and it works like a charm.[/quote]

++ and i stream to it.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

For anyone thinking of doing this, highly, highly recommended. At least twice as fast as my old g network, and the sound quality beaming songs around the house is actually better than I expected. Great products, both of them...

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

So can you use Airport Extreme + external hdd as an NAS, or is it automated to work only with Time Machine for system backups?

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

honestly, I haven't had a chance to give that a whirl yet -- I need to grab a power strip to free up outlet space near the base station for the drive -- but my understanding from the documentation is that either works. I'll let you know, though, as I should have it up and running by Friday at the latest...

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

Sweet thanks, if it works as a normal drag-and-drop file NAS + Time Machine + router + music stream ... this is just about perfect :D

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

I think it does work for normal file sharing.

[QUOTE][B]Sharing and Securing USB Hard Disks on Your AirPort Extreme Base Station[/B]

If you connect a USB hard disk to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, computers connected to the network, both wireless and wired, [COLOR=Red]can use it to back up, store, and share files[/COLOR].

To share a USB hard disk on you network:

1 Plug the hard disk into the USB port on the back of the base station.

2 Open AirPort Utility, located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder on a Mac, and in Start > All Programs > AirPort on a computer using Windows

3 Select your base station, and then choose Manual Setup from the Base Station menu, or double-click the base station to open its configuration in a separate window. Enter the base station password if necessary.

4 Click Disks in the toolbar, and then click File Sharing.

5 Choose “With a disk password,” or “With base station password” if you want to secure the shared disk with a password, or choose “With accounts” if you want to secure the disk using accounts.

If you choose to use accounts, click Configure Accounts, click the Add (+) button, and then enter a name and password for each user that will access the disk.

6 Choose “Not allowed,” “Read only,” or “Read and write” to assign guest access to the disk.

7 Select the “Share disks over Ethernet WAN port” checkbox if you want to provide remote access to the disk over the WAN port.[/QUOTE]

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

I went ahead and attached a bus-powered drive to the base (Extreme) and it works like a champ as a file sharing drive. Great thing is that that is the drive I use for storage of all my tunes, and iTunes still recognizes it as such even though it is no longer connected directly to my MB -== notwithstanding that I didn't do shit other than just plug it in.

FYI, the Express can be used for network printing, but not for network drives -- the drive has to be used on the Extreme. Will report back after I get the TM drive attached, to confirm that it works for that, too...

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

Airport Extreme Base costs AUD249 ... wondering if there is a more economical option. Maybe a wireless modem/router + NAS with built-in BT downloader.

Re: Apple Airport Extreme/Express

Wow. that Airport seems like it's a good 4-5 steps ahead of all other routers. No wonder it costs so much more. Think I might eventually be interested in one.