Notes on a Dual-Mode Airport Extreme Network — Luo.ma

http://luo.ma/52/dual-band-airport-network/

This is exactly what I have set up at home, and it works great. 2 notes: the Nintendo DS needs 802.11b connectivity, if you have one; and this works nicely also if you want to hook one base station up to a printer and another up to an external hard drive.

Configuring AirPort Extreme to Work With Blizzard Downloader

(Moslty for my own reference.) If you’re trying to download a patch of World of Warcraft, have an Apple AirPort base station, and are getting the error “Your computer appears to be behind a firewall”, these are the steps I was able to use to get it to work.

1. Open up AirPort Utility.
2. Click on your AirPort station and select “Manual Setup” from the “Base Station Menu” (or ⌘-L).
3. Click “Advanced”, and “Port Mapping”.
4. Click the “+” button.
5. Enter “3724,6112,6881-6999” into the Public and Private UDP and TCP ports, and enter your own IP address into “Private IP Address”. (To get your IP address, open up System Preferences, go to Network, click on your AirPort station, click “Advanced”, then “TCP/IP”. Your IP address is what’s listed as IPv4 Address.)
6. Click “Continue”, and name it whatever you want, then “Done”.

The Blizzard Downloader should turn green. If it doesn’t, try restarting the app.

Time Machine with AirPort Extreme AirDisk

Yesterday’s updates now allow you to back up to an external drive attached to an AirPort Extreme base station, a feature that was previously announced, then yanked, then recently only available through Apple’s Time Capsule. TUAW reported it last night, and now MacWorld and Gizmodo both have the story as well. I set it up last night on my iMac, and the feature works as expected. Attached a drive to your base station, open up the drive in the Finder to mount it, and then go into Time Machine’s preferences and you can select that drive from the list. What I haven’t tested is what will happen when a laptop enters and leaves the network frequently. I’ll be playing with that this weekend.

Michael Tsai - Blog - Buy Base Station to Get Software Update

Michael Tsai - Blog - Buy Base Station to Get Software Update

Bizzare aspect of accounting law says that Apple can’t give away its 802.11n upgrades for free.

New AirPort

In addition to the iPhone announced today (which looks peachy), there’s also a new AirPort station, which has a very cool feature:

New to AirPort Extreme, AirPort Disk turns almost any external USB hard drive into a shared drive. Simply connect the drive to the USB port on the back of your AirPort Extreme and—voila—all the documents, videos, photos, and other files on the drive instantly become available to anyone on the secure network, Mac and PC alike. It’s perfect for backups, collaborative projects, and more.

Were you wondering how useful Time Machine was going to be for laptops? There you go.

Comcast Internet vs. Airport Extreme

Saturday night I spent many hours trying to get an Airport Extreme base station to work with a Comcast cable modem. Comcast apparently implements DHCP slightly differently than the rest of the world does, preventing the Airport Extreme station from getting an IP address. The internet worked fine when hooked directly up to any computer or to an older Airpot base station, but the Extreme version couldn’t handle it. Sunday morning, the Mac Genius at the Clarendon Apple Store said that he had heard other complaints of the problem, and provided a solution: go get the cheapest router you can find ($20-30 range) and hook it up to the modem, and then hook the base station up to it. The router will get the IP address and the base station will work fine. Voila!