An Apple AirPort Extreme range increase is a welcome thing, and we’re lucky to welcome just that with Apple’s new 802.11n WiFi unit. I get the feeling most home users want range over throughput, because (I’m going to go out on a limb here) most home users use their WiFi networks to surf the Web, and not move files. Or at least the ratio is heavily skewed toward surfing. And as we all know, surfing speeds’ bottleneck lies in ISP speeds, at least in the US. (Damn those Europeans and Asians with their 8Mbps+.)
The older G technology failed to perform from 300 feet away, but the new N-enabled AirPort still transferred 500KB/sec. The testers said they grew tired of walking and stopped, but believe users could still get signal at up to 600 feet from the 802.11n base station under proper conditions.
(via MacNN)
Apple’s 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station is shipping in the U.S. at $179.
February 8th, 2007 at 1:58 am
I’m in South Korea (with the wonderful nose-bleeding fast internet), using an Airport Express with my 2.16MHz MacBook Pro
Its nice… But, the new Airport Extreme won’t be available in South Korea for another 1 or 2 months, white the government does tests on it (they do it on everything imported here… The upgraded MacBooks were about 1 month later than the rest of the world).