AppleInsider › Forums › Mac Hardware › Future Apple Hardware › When will Apple switch to faster Airport?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

When will Apple switch to faster Airport?

post #1 of 7
11/17/01 at 3:23pm
Thread Starter 
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/22900.html" target="_blank">http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/22900.html</a>
<a href="http://www.apple.com/airport/" target="_blank">http://www.apple.com/airport/</a>

128 - bit security. America Online support. Oh please. I admit that the extra Ethernet port is useful, but Apple needs to release a wireless product that can support dozens of wireless iMacs all surfing the Net at the same time! Libraries and schools want this. I want faster Airport, so I can get Ethernet speeds (10/100 is probably too much to ask for) so I can wirelessly network my Pismos, iMac, and whenever i get my iBooks.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 7
11/17/01 at 4:03pm
[quote]Originally posted by cdhostage:
<strong>128 - bit security. America Online support. Oh please. I admit that the extra Ethernet port is useful, but Apple needs to release a wireless product that can support dozens of wireless iMacs all surfing the Net at the same time! Libraries and schools want this. I want faster Airport, so I can get Ethernet speeds (10/100 is probably too much to ask for) so I can wirelessly network my Pismos, iMac, and whenever i get my iBooks.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, let's see...

There are currently around 25 million AOL users in the US. Around 98% of them still use dial-up. Apple's AirPort is currently the only 802.11hub that will allow AOL users to use their accounts wirelessly. That seems like a pretty big deal to me.

A single Base Station supports 50 users, which is just over 4 dozen. Dozens. Most home/small business 802.11 hubs recommend 10 users maximum because there is a point where the hub will become a bottleneck. Even if you had a hub that supports more users, the chances are the computers are going to be distributed over a wide area, throughout a school, library, office or whatever. Get beyond 100ft and you start losing bandwidth. Localized hubs that serve a smaller area are a smarter idea.

Unless you intend to shift huge files across your network, 11Mbits per second should be more than enough.
Chicanery.
Reply
Chicanery.
Reply
post #3 of 7
11/17/01 at 9:19pm
Besides... 1394b's real world speeds are *not* that impressive. Still, it wouldn't hurt--though it's far from necessary for you to network your several computers (and if you happen to own 50 computers and the airport is too slow for you to be copying dozens of huge files on all of them at the same time, there is NO REASON for you not to just buy another base station or two. ). The only thing that I think AirPort could use now is probably a price drop.

Though I would like to see Apple start stuffing hard drives in the base stations so they could be miniature wireless plug-and-go fileservers, that would be quite nifty--maybe in the future Apple could shift from using wireless networking to link together computers to using it as something for pseudo-laptops to connect to mainframes--office mainframes, your house's mainframes--no more juggling around files, just keep things central. One big server doing all of the dirty work in your house, and a bunch of semi-dummy terminals. Kill two birds with one stone. Though that is a little off-topic. But hey, it's Future Hardware, right?!
art may imitate life, but life imitates tv.
Reply
art may imitate life, but life imitates tv.
Reply
post #4 of 7
11/17/01 at 9:25pm
when 802.11g is finalized and Lucent has finished developing cards.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 7
11/17/01 at 11:23pm
brad... 1394b is firewire.

802.11x is airport.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 7
11/18/01 at 7:50am
[quote]From the MacNN Main Page:
<strong>Standard for AirPort successor approved</strong>

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has approved the 802.11g wireless networking standard, which offers transfer speeds of 54 Mbits/second, compared to 11 Mbits/second offered by the 802.11b standard used in Apple's AirPort. Intersil and Texas Instruments collaborated on the new standard, which will be backwards compatible with 802.11b.<hr></blockquote>

New standard! :eek: :cool:
My Syte
Reply
My Syte
Reply
post #7 of 7
11/19/01 at 9:36am
[quote]Originally posted by cdhostage:
<strong>128 - bit security. America Online support. Oh please. I admit that the extra Ethernet port is useful, but Apple needs to release a wireless product that can support dozens of wireless iMacs all surfing the Net at the same time! Libraries and schools want this. I want faster Airport, so I can get Ethernet speeds (10/100 is probably too much to ask for) so I can wirelessly network my Pismos, iMac, and whenever i get my iBooks.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Well, technically, 11Mb is ethernet speeds. For surfing on the internet, that's more than enough bandwidth. My girlfriend's TiBook, my PB1400 and G4 are usually on AirPort all the time (she's surfing, I'm transferrring files), and the performance is more than adequate. For more users (&gt;50, for example), get another base station, as Belle succinctly points out.

AirPort is still okay today, even though competitors are now beating it on price (which wasn't true when it was introduced). Also, by not going 802.11a, Apple has an upgrade path with 11g without cutting off current users.

Patience, young one.

~e
<img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
Ich bin a big jelly donut.
Reply
Ich bin a big jelly donut.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Future Apple Hardware
AppleInsider › Forums › Mac Hardware › Future Apple Hardware › When will Apple switch to faster Airport?