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26-440: AirPort Extreme is a line of residential gateways made by Apple Inc. that combine the functions of a router , network switch , wireless access point and NAS as well as varied other functions. It is one of Apple's former AirPort products. The latest model, the 6th generation, supports 802.11ac networking in addition to older standards. Versions of the same system with a built-in network-accessible hard drive are known as

52-444: A Bloomberg report on November 21, 2016, "Apple Inc. has disbanded its division that develops wireless routers, another move to try to sharpen the company’s focus on consumer products that generate the bulk of its revenue, according to people familiar with the matter." In an April 2018 statement to 9to5Mac , Apple announced the discontinuation of its AirPort line, effectively leaving the consumer router market. Apple continued supporting

78-526: A computer. This is due to the processor speed on the AirPort Extreme. Depending on the setup and types of reads and writes, performance ranges from 0.5 to 17.5 MB/s for writing and 1.9 to 25.6 MB/s for reading. Performance for the same disk connected directly to a computer would be 6.6 to 31.6 MB/s for writing and 7.1 to 37.2 MB/s for reading. NTFS -formatted drives are not supported. The original AirPort Extreme Base Station in 2003

104-514: A maximum data rate of 1.3 Gbit/s, which is nearly three times faster than 802.11n. Time Machine was now supported using an external USB hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme (802.11ac model only). 2.4 GHz 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz *802.11n draft-specification support in 1st- to 3rd-generation models. ** 802.11ac draft-specification support in 6th-generation model. ***All models support IPv6 tunnel mode. ****Supported by Apple. According to

130-797: A similar fashion to a modem. It can allow a direct connection from a home LAN to a WWAN , if a wireless router or access point is present on the WAN as well and tethering is allowed. Many modems now incorporate the features mentioned below and thus are appropriately described as residential gateways, such as some Internet providers which offer a cable modem router combo. A residential gateway usually provides It may also provide other functions such as Dynamic DNS , and converged triple play services such as TV and telephony . Most gateways are self-contained components, using internally stored firmware. They are generally platform-independent, i.e., they can serve any operating system . Wireless routers perform

156-489: Is 1.3 Gbit/s, while Wave 2 can reach 2.34 Gbit/s. Wave 2 can therefore achieve 1 Gbit/s even if the real world throughput turns out to be only 50% of the theoretical rate. Wave 2 also supports a higher number of connected devices. Several companies are currently offering 802.11ac chipsets with higher modulation rates: MCS-10 and MCS-11 (1024-QAM), supported by Quantenna and Broadcom. Although technically not part of 802.11ac, these new MCS indices became official in

182-421: The 4th generation model MC340LL/A and the 5th generation model MD031LL/A can be seen below: Note: A 3dB increase is equivalent to a doubling of power output. On June 10, 2013, Apple unveiled an updated AirPort Extreme, referred to as AirPort Extreme 802.11ac (6th Generation) . The 6th generation AirPort Extreme (and 5th generation AirPort Time Capsule) featured three-stream 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology with

208-590: The 5 GHz band . The standard has been retroactively labelled as Wi-Fi 5 by Wi-Fi Alliance . The specification has multi-station throughput of at least 1.1 gigabit per second (1.1 Gbit/s) and single-link throughput of at least 500 megabits per second (0.5 Gbit/s). This is accomplished by extending the air-interface concepts embraced by 802.11n : wider RF bandwidth (up to 160 MHz), more MIMO spatial streams (up to eight), downlink multi-user MIMO (up to four clients), and high-density modulation (up to 256-QAM ). The Wi-Fi Alliance separated

234-645: The AirPort Time Capsule . Apple discontinued developing its lineup of wireless routers in 2016, but as of 2023 continues limited hardware and software support. The first AirPort Extreme was announced at the MacWorld expo in San Francisco on January 7, 2003. It featured 802.11g wireless technology for the first time in an AirPort base station. The name "AirPort Extreme" originally referred to any one of Apple's AirPort products that implemented

260-509: The (then) newly introduced 802.11g Wi-Fi standard, differentiating it from earlier devices that ran the slower 802.11a and b standards. At that time (circa 2003) the gateway part of this lineup was known as the AirPort Extreme Base Station . With the addition of the even faster Draft-N standards in early 2009 the naming of "Base Station" was dropped, and was renamed to AirPort Extreme. Several minor upgrades followed with

286-557: The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios could achieve combined throughput approaching 1900 Mbit/s. Different possible stream configurations can add up to the same AC number. Quantenna released the first 802.11ac chipset for retail Wi-Fi routers and consumer electronics on November 15, 2011. Redpine Signals released the first low power 802.11ac technology for smartphone application processors on December 14, 2011. On January 5, 2012, Broadcom announced its first 802.11ac Wi-Fi chips and partners and on April 27, 2012, Netgear announced

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#1732790251995

312-711: The 802.11ax standard, ratified in 2021. 160 MHz channels are unavailable in some countries due to regulatory issues that allocated some frequencies for other purposes. 802.11ac-class device wireless speeds are often advertised as AC followed by a number, that number being the highest link rates in Mbit/s of all the simultaneously-usable radios in the device added up. For example, an AC1900 access point might have 600 Mbit/s capability on its 2.4 GHz radio and 1300 Mbit/s capability on its 5 GHz radio. No single client device could connect and achieve 1900 Mbit/s of throughput, but separate devices each connecting to

338-529: The AirPort Extreme. Residential gateway The term residential gateway was popularized by Clifford Holliday in 1997 through his paper entitled "The residential gateway". . Multiple devices have been described as residential gateways : A modem (e.g. DSL modem , cable modem ) by itself provides none of the functions of a router. It merely allows ATM or PPP or PPPoE traffic to be transmitted across telephone lines, cable wires, optical fibers, wireless radio frequencies, or other physical layers. On

364-415: The business was "a boon for other wireless router makers." The AirPort Disk feature allows users to plug a USB hard drive into the AirPort Extreme for use as a network-attached storage (NAS) device for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows clients. Users may also connect a USB hub and printer. The performance of USB hard drives attached to an AirPort Extreme is slower than if the drive were connected directly to

390-689: The devices took on a flat rounded rectangle shape, similar in layout and size to the Mac mini or early models of the Apple TV . The 2013 model had a more vertical form, taller than it was wide. In approximately 2016, Apple disbanded the wireless router team that developed the AirPort Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme router. In 2018, Apple formally discontinued both products, exiting the router market. Bloomberg News noted that "Apple rarely discontinues product categories" and that its decision to leave

416-492: The first Broadcom-enabled router. On May 14, 2012, Buffalo Technology released the world’s first 802.11ac products to market, releasing a wireless router and client bridge adapter. On December 6, 2012, Huawei announced commercial availability of the industry's first enterprise-level 802.11ac Access Point. Motorola Solutions is selling 802.11ac access points including the AP 8232. In April 2014, Hewlett-Packard started selling

442-473: The following: The single-link and multi-station enhancements supported by 802.11ac enable several new WLAN usage scenarios, such as simultaneous streaming of HD video to multiple clients throughout the home, rapid synchronization and backup of large data files, wireless display, large campus/auditorium deployments, and manufacturing floor automation. To fully utilize their WLAN capacities, 802.11ac access points and routers have sufficient throughput to require

468-529: The functionality provided by AirPort Time Capsule . On March 3, 2009, Apple unveiled a new AirPort Extreme with simultaneous dual-band 802.11 Draft-N radios. This allowed full 802.11 Draft-N 2x2 communication in both 802.11 Draft-N bands at the same time. On October 20, 2009, Apple unveiled an updated AirPort Extreme with antenna improvements. On June 21, 2011, Apple unveiled an updated AirPort Extreme, referred to as AirPort Extreme 802.11n (5th Generation) . The detailed table of output power comparison between

494-503: The inclusion of a USB 3.0 interface to provide various services such as video streaming, FTP servers, and personal cloud services. With storage locally attached through USB 2.0 , filling the bandwidth made available by 802.11ac was not easily accomplished. All rates assume 256-QAM, rate 5/6: Wave 2, referring to products introduced in 2016, offers a higher throughput than legacy Wave 1 products, those introduced starting in 2013. The maximum physical layer theoretical rate for Wave 1

520-949: The introduction of 802.11ac wireless products into two phases ("waves"), named "Wave 1" and "Wave 2". From mid-2013, the alliance started certifying Wave 1 802.11ac products shipped by manufacturers, based on the IEEE 802.11ac Draft 3.0 (the IEEE standard was not finalized until later that year). Subsequently in 2016, Wi-Fi Alliance introduced the Wave 2 certification, which includes additional features like MU-MIMO (down-link only), 160 MHz channel width support, support for more 5 GHz channels, and four spatial streams (with four antennas; compared to three in Wave 1 and 802.11n, and eight in IEEE's 802.11ax specification). It meant Wave 2 products would have higher bandwidth and capacity than Wave 1 products. New technologies introduced with 802.11ac include

546-450: The receiving end is another modem that re-converts the transmission format back into digital data packets. This allows network bridging using telephone, cable, optical, and radio connection methods. The modem also provides handshake protocols , so that the devices on each end of the connection are able to recognize each other. However, a modem generally provides few other network functions. A cellular wireless access point can function in

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572-577: The same functions as a wired router and base station, but allow connectivity for wireless devices with the LAN, or as a bridge between the wireless router and another wireless router for a meshnet (the wireless router-wireless router connection can be within the LAN or can be between the LAN and WWAN). Low-cost production and requirement for user friendliness make gateways vulnerable to network attacks, which resulted in large clusters of such devices being taken over and used to launch DDoS attacks. A majority of

598-432: The short, rounded-square form factor that would be seen until 2013. On January 9, 2007 the AirPort Extreme began shipping, with support for 802.11n draft specification, and built-in wireless print and storage server. On March 19, 2008, Apple released a firmware update for both models of the AirPort Extreme that, according to third-party reports, allowed AirPort Disks to be used in conjunction with Time Machine , similar to

624-541: The vulnerabilities were present in the web administration frontends of the routers, allowing unauthorized control either via default passwords , vendor backdoors , or web vulnerabilities . 802.11ac IEEE 802.11ac-2013 or 802.11ac is a wireless networking standard in the IEEE 802.11 set of protocols (which is part of the Wi-Fi networking family), providing high-throughput wireless local area networks (WLANs) on

650-405: The wireless-N models, mostly to change antenna and wireless output power. In 2013, a major upgrade changed the physical structure of the device, added 802.11ac support, and added more antennas. The AirPort Extreme has gone through three distinct physical forms. The earliest models had a similar plastic housing to the original AirPort Base Station, in a round "flying saucer" shape. From 2007 to 2013,

676-440: Was so named because of its support for the 802.11g standard of the day, as well as for its ability to serve up to 50 Macs or PCs simultaneously. One feature found in most models of this generation was an internal 56K dial-up modem, allowing homes that lacked a broadband connection to enjoy wireless connectivity, albeit at dial-up speeds. It was the last generation to retain the "flying saucer" form factor. Later generations would adopt

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