Apple today quietly updated its Airport base stations, featuring 802.11n, giving up to five times the performance of previous Airport base stations and twice the coverage.

“The new Airport Extreme is the most powerful and easy to use Wi-Fi base station that we have ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With five times the performance and twice the range, now you can transfer bigger files faster and get access to the Internet and your favorite digital media from many areas in your house you couldn’t reach before.”

Using MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) smart antennas and 802.11n technology, AirPort Extreme now delivers greater data throughput and extends the reach of wireless connectivity to more areas of the home, business or school. With the ability to operate in either the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz wireless frequencies, AirPort Extreme also reduces the possibility of interference from appliances and cordless phones that operate in the 2.4 GHz frequency. AirPort Extreme is backward compatible with Macs and PCs using previous generation 802.11b/g wireless technologies.

The AirPort Extreme Base Station features a simple, new design that is just 6.5 inches square and 1.3 inches tall, and a built-in USB port allows users to print wirelessly to a USB printer or turn any external USB hard drive into a shared drive so they can share files or backup valuable data from multiple computers on a network. New AirPort Utility software included with every AirPort Extreme makes it very easy to set up a secure, wireless network for up to 50 simultaneous users within minutes. Users can also set security restrictions, including Internet access limits on their childrens’ computers.

The AirPort Extreme Base Station also includes:

  • 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless networking;
  • MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) smart antennas;
  • dual-band antennas for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies;
  • three 10/100 Ethernet LAN ports;
  • one 10/100 Ethernet WAN port;
  • one USB port;
  • Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA-2), 128-bit WEP encryption; and
  • a built-in NAT firewall.
Airport Extreme Base Station (Front)Airport Extreme Base Station (Front)
Airport Extreme Base Station (Back)Airport Extreme Base Station (Back)