Airport Extreme October 2009

Before reading this article, we recommend to read the one dedicated to the Time Capsule V3.

So, along with new iMac and Mac mini models, Apple introduced in October 2009 a new Airport Extreme station supposed to improve performance for transfer speed by 50% and effective range by 25%.

From the outside, as well as from its specifications, nothing seems to have changed. The station features 4 Ethernet Gigabit ports, 1 USB port for external HD and printers. It is compatible with wireless network 802.11n dual band 2.4 and 5 GHz and can work simultaneously with both frequencies. However, there are inside numerous changes.

The previous generation is on the left side, while the new model is on the right. If the number of antenna does not evolve (4), the logic board has been modified, especially the connector on which is plugged the WiFi card. 

On a practical point of view, you will need the Airport utility version 5.5 provided on a CD with the station. Its firmware is the version 7.5 instead of 7.4.2 with previous models.

We have performed data transfer tests between a Mac Pro connected via a cable to the station and a MacBook Pro 2009. Around ten meters away from the station (including several walls in between), we did not notice variation in the transfer speed with a steady rate of 5.5 MB/s.
However, things are really different when we perform the test with the MBP located in the same room than the Airport Extreme station: while with the previous model we could not reach more than 9 MB/s, the new model is able to deliver 14.6 MB/s, validating Apple’s claim of up to 50% increase in data transfer speed. This is most likely only obtained thanks to the 802.11a channel, but this channel only gets activated if there is no other wireless network of similar frequency that could interfere.

In conclusion, if you do not have a WiFi station yet, or if you have a 802.11g model while all your Mac support feature 802.11n, the new Airport Extreme is a good solution to boost performance. If you already own the previous generation of Airport Extreme n, then the performance gain will be limited and such investment might be difficult to justify, except if you want to optimize short range transfer speed.