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When the new Apple Airport Extreme base stations were released this year with 802.11N support, they peaked my interest.  The “N” support, combined with the USB file and print serving, and gateway/routing abilities are what interested me.  I had a firewall that was dying, and I had a WiFi access point as well (which worked fine).  I also had a file server.  I was looking to consolidate devices, reduce the total footprint, and reduce power consumption.

This is where the Airport Extreme seemed to effectively fit those desires.  I eventually went out and purchased one, and worked through setting it up to handle all those various tasks.  Everything setup without a hitch, which exactly as I expected, having almost all Mac computers for clients.  It has now been many months since that transition, and I have had a more complete experience with the Airport Extreme.  Here are things I have noticed, good and bad.

Good:

1: It does a great job as a home internet gateway.  It performs as well, or better than my previous firewall at overall network performance.  Port mapping is very easy, and works flawlessly.

2: Software updates are automatic.  This may seem minor, but to me, it is very nice to have a vendor that automatically looks to keep such a device up to date.  In the past, I had to remember to go look for updates, download them manually, and handle the firmware update manually.  This is not a huge deal, but it is nice to have in place.

3: File server is very easy to use.  It is a very simple and straightforward setup, and works without issue.  NOTE: It took a little getting use to that when you create user accounts, it automatically chooses and creates the associated user folder.

4: Print serving works great with the HP 5400 series inkjet connected.  I have not tried it with any other printer yet.

5: Bonjour works fine on the sharing and connecting of the above file and print sharing.

6: File sharing over the WAN connection works well.  I set this up just to see how well it worked, and it was completely fine to use.  I subsequently turned it off, as I do nott need such ability, and it makes me nervous (security).

BAD:

1:  This is the BIG one.  When I put the network through a heavy load of traffic, like transferring ~20GB of data from one USB shared drive and another (both connected to the Airport), it occasionally just freaks out.  It will still show everyone connected, but for all intents and purposes, it is totally locked.  You cannot see it with the Airport Utility, or ping it, or anything else.  I have to walk over to it, unplug, and plug back in.  This has happened to me twice.  So, while rare, still very annoying, and I hope it gets fixed.

2: There is no Apple TV integration.  I stream my Apple TV content over my network, as I have too much to fit on the internal drive of that device.  I cannot understand while Apple doesn’t let you leverage shared storage on the Airport Extreme.  You still need a machine running iTunes.  Personally, I think this is a pretty big missed opportunity.

All in all, it is a great Wifi router.  Easily one of the best I have had from a reliability perspective (other than an 802.11b Cisco 350 series I had back in the day, which never failed).  It has a solid selection of features, and is actually priced fairly competitive to other 802.11N offerings.  It has a small footprint, and does not seem to generate much heat.  I definitely recommend it to anyone, especially people with a largely Mac home network.