Curious Question about the Airport Extreme Base Station?

[SKYLANE]

Why no gigabit?

For a unit that came out when it did, I am surprised it has no gigabit. Nearly all, if not all, of the Mac hardware today is gigabit capable -- so why would Apple not include wired gigabit in the Airport Express Base Station (AEBS)?

It seems to me that not having gigabit would slow down capabilities for gigabit capable computers on the network with regards to data transfer. Not to mention that the 100bT being the limiting choke point for data transfers to the USB connected harddrive to an AEBS.

Am I misinterpreting the capability of the AEBS or the specs?

[mattkime]

yeah, its kinda weird.

[Ken Sp.]

Yea---maybe in rev B (just an uneducated guess)---I noticed it at MWSF intro, and I got no good answer from Apple engineers/product managers

From MacWorld
http://www.macworld.com/2007/01/firstloo...x.php?pf=1

What’s missing
No Gigabit (1000BASE-T) Ethernet As noted above, the new Base Station includes a 10/100 switch. This means that it supports 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T Ethernet. It also means that the new Base Station doesn’t support the newer—and faster—1000BASE-T (a.k.a., Gigabit Ethernet) standard, a technology present on every Mac shipping today (though not on the Apple TV, which features a 10/100 jack). Apple told Macworld that 10/100 Ethernet “delivers ample performance for the most common tasks on a home network, even multiple video streams.” And for the most part, that’s a fair statement—the lack of Gigabit Ethernet will likely affect only those users who have two or more Gigabit-Ethernet-equipped Macs connected directly to the AirPort Extreme’s Ethernet ports and who use that connection to transfer large amounts of data between those wired Macs. The limitation won’t affect wireless data transfers, or even transfers between wired and wireless devices—although 802.11n can theoretically saturate a 100BASE-T connection, when you take into account network overhead, radio interference, and other factors, it’s unlikely you’ll see faster-than-100BASE-T speeds over wireless.

[pdq]

I would rather know why it doesn't do Airtunes like an Airport Express.

(It doesn't, right?)

[jdc]

nope, they screwed up

we have talked about it before

i think D-link makes a very similar device as the ABES but with gigabit

[OWC Jamie]

I bought one to replace a Netgear router that would occasionally go brain dead, here at my office.
Also to add wireless capability.
My whole lan speeded up. No absolute tests.
Printer recieved jobs sooner, web pages flashed open on the screen like they never had.
The netgear must not have been all that great from day one.

I never had wireless before, so to test it I had an employee walk away from this steel skinned building up the street with a laptop.
He has wireless at home that doesn't work from one end of his house to the other and his first question when he got back from the end of the street was : "How much"?

So far, I've been happy.

[d0e]

so people who need the speed upgrade to 802.11N