For some reason, when I purchased my Macbook Pro with 802.11n enabled, my Belkin N-1 basestation had poor wireless connectivity with the machine. I couldn’t really figure it out. I changed some settings, but nothing seemed to be acceptable. It was unusual because I had an AppleTV connected via 802.11n as well and it seems to work just fine. I decided that I would try another basestation and see if my luck would change. Since I’m a big Apple fan, I decided I would give it a try. I was looking for something that had decent features, was easy to configure, and I was interested in the AirDisk and print sharing capabilities.

Since my Macbook Pro already had the latest Airport Admin utilities installed, I used those to configure the Apple Airport Extreme. The setup and configuration was pretty straight forward. I setup wireless with WPA encryption, and setup MAC address filtering. I also had an Airport Express I was previously using and it was easy to setup to extend my network. I connected the AppleTV, Macbook Pro, and iPhone wirelessly. Then I connected a Powerbook, Mac Mini, and V-Tech/Vonage VOIP. I created static IPs for the wired machines and used DHCP for the wireless machines.

I was using the Powerbook for a backup and print server, which may be replaced by the Airport Extreme depending on more reliability tests. In the meantime, I plugged a small flash drive into the Airport Extreme to test AirDisk. The Macbook Pro found the disk instantly since it had the latest Airport utilities. I had to install them on the Mac Mini and Powerbook, and after that it auto detected the shared drive. It’s actually really convenient that it auto-mounts and it’s just enough space where I can take small files that I use, like this article post and easily sent it to my other machines. I could email it of course, but I think this method is just as easy.

Previously, I would have to periodically reset my Belkin N-1 and even before that my Netgear RangeMax. I don’t know if the Apple auto-connects on connection failure, but I’ve had yet to reset it. Connectivity and reception is very good and I get more than acceptable speeds.

I was able to setup port forwarding for my Subversion server and that seems to work just fine as well. I didn’t really think I would have issues with that. All my other routers seemed to do that just fine.

Overall, I’m really happy with the product. Like I said I’m an Apple fan, so I may be a little biased toward the product, but if I was having problems I wouldn’t be shy about it. The price seems a little high, but I think it’s worth it for it’s easy of setup, speedy connectivity, and it’s extra features like print and disk serving. If you’re looking for a new 802.11n base-station, it’s worth giving a try.