Slate Praises Apple xBS's Bridging
My colleague Paul Boutin writes some practical and extravagant praise of the AirPort Extreme Base Station's (AxBS) ability to bridge across multiple units to form a larger network without wires linking base stations.
That is, you can plug one AxBS into a wired Internet connection and then deploy up to four satellite base stations that all communicate wirelessly back to the mother ship. This allows you to build out a larger network with running Ethernet cables to join it up, defeating some of the joy of wireless in the first place.
Of course, because these satellite are all using the same channel as the mother ship, you're effectively dramatically decreasing available bandwidth. But, flip side again, because Extreme operates up to 54 Mbps (raw speed), you have some bandwidth to burn compared to most broadband connections.
Comments
The WDS mode has to be one of the best new features of Extreme base stations. However, it should be added that WDS is a manufacturer-specific enhancement not ratified by the WiFi alliance. Thus, there can be insurmountable combatibility issues when mixing manufacturers on your wireless network.
Essentially, WDS was a "me too" as other manufacturers like D-Link, et al, started to provide "repeater"-mode functionality via firmware upgrade. You point out one the the key weaknesses of the Apple implementation, as the "satellites" cannot repeat to other AEBS "satellites".
However, there are some other features I really like in the new base station:
1) Built-in Kensington-style lock. A great feature for school districts or anyone that wants to use the ABS in a public environment.
2) Low-Voltage (i.e. low-heat) universal power supply. Power-over-Ethernet may no longer cheap, but I'll gladly trade that off for a longer base station life as more points of failure inside the ABS are eliminated.
3) Full 10/100 Ports on both the WAN and the LAN side. Finally, enterprise users can fill up the bandwidth if the want to.
4) External antenna plug. Makes it easier for folks to extend network range and/or shape their network coverage to enhance security.
5) Native support for RADIUS servers. Most of us don't have the resources to set something like that up, however. How about a OSX Radius implementation?
What I'd really like to see:
1) A better enclosure. Judging from the heavy heatsinks inside the ABS, heat is still an issue. I'd probably run my AEBS with the top enclosure plastics off to encourage convection cooling.
2) WDS support for Graphite and Snow base stations so that they can be "satellites". Unlikely, I know.
3) More switched LAN ports. One is not enough.
4) An end to the interoperability issues that seem to plague 802.11g and 802.11b networks.
5) Better interoperability and work-around strategies for congested bandwidth. That is, it would be great if network gear could work around channel congestion and intereference instead of relying on humans to make judgement calls.
6) Nevertheless, I also pray for more unlicensed bandwidth for 2.4GHz networks to play with. In the US, the proximity of channels basically reduces the usable channels from the theoretical 11 to 3.
7) VPN support: Either SSH or PGP to secure transmissions between the AEBS and your home network. WEP is a joke.
Posted by: Constantin | June 10, 2003 08:00 AM
I am using a pair of AEBS, and I have secured my wireless network with IPsec.
Mac OS X has a complete IPsec implementation. It only lacks a graphic front-end, but it is usable. If you need a graphic front-end, you can use VPN Tracker.
I end my IPsec tunnels in a FreeBSD machine. You can use an old PC for that.
Regarding Radius for Mac OS X, you forget it is Unix :-) There are some Radius servers available for Unix, very well supported under FreeBSD. Most of them (if not all) are surely trivial to compile under Mac OS X.
Posted by: Borja Marcos | June 10, 2003 03:07 PM