New Airport Extreme has no support for Wireless Distribution System (WDS)


you can't use an Airport Express to extend the range of the new Airport Extreme 802.11n base station...

new 802.11n Airport Extreme Something I have not seen mentioned in all the stuff about the new Airport Extreme 802.11n is that there is no support for WDS.

WDS which stands for Wireless Distribution System is a protocol which allows you to extend a wireless network wirelessly.

With Apple's old Airport Extreme (the 802.11g) base station you could use an Airport Express (or another Airport Extreme) to connect to the existing wireless network wirelessly and then literally act as a remote base station extending the range and allowing remote clients to connect.

It was really useful for large houses or those with a lot of metal in their construction.

However though it has not yet been released and nor has the manual, according to Apple's own tech specs, you can't use an Airport Express to extend the wireless network of a new Airport Extreme base station.

From:

http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/specs.html

AirPort Express can extend the range only of an AirPort Express wireless network.

This implies that it can't be used to extend the range of an Airport Extreme (802.11n) network.

Also

http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/specs.html

does not mention WDS or extending the network wirelessly.

The previous pages on the older 802.11g Airport Extreme did mention WDS and extending, the omission strikes me that it is now no longer possible.

So why is this?

It should also be noted that the Airport Extreme 802.11n uses a different chipset to the Express and therefore is probably incompatible when it comes to WDS.

It should be noted that an Airport Express in client mode will be able to connect to the new Airport Extreme, though as an 802.11g client would slow down a native 802.11n network.

Very few third party routers support Apple's implementation of WDS and therefore it is of no real surprise that their own new Airport Extreme also does not support WDS.

However what is surprising is that you can't use another new 802.11n Airport Extreme to extend the network of an 802.11n Airport Extreme, so there is no support for WDS even when using two or more of the new base stations.

I suspect that when some people receive their pre-ordered Airport Extreme base stations, they will be disappointed if they are relying on WDS to extend their network.


Posted: Tue - January 16, 2007 at 04:43 PM         | |

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