June 2003
Intermediate to advanced
184 pages
5h 8m
English
Content preview from Building Wireless Community Networks, Second EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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The Apple AirPort Base Station
The AirPort is a tremendously popular access point (so popular, in fact, that there are a number of variations available: AirPort Graphite, AirPort Snow, and Airport Extreme). It looks like a slick, retro-futuristic prop from “War of the Worlds,” and is very portable and rugged. While designed for use with the Mac platform, it works very well as a general-purpose access point (and you don’t even need a Mac to configure it; see the next section). As I write this, the original Graphite AirPort sells retail for about $140. What does that get you?
Direct Ethernet bridging
DHCP / NAT
56k dialup modem port
User-definable ESSID
Roaming support
MAC address filtering
40-bit WEP encryption
The Snow AirPort introduced an additional Ethernet port and more firewall options, as well as 104-bit WEP and completely redesigned internals. The new AirPort Extreme (about $199) comes equipped with all sorts of goodies, including two Ethernet ports, and most importantly, a draft 802.11g “Extreme” card. For $50 more, they throw in a USB port (for sharing a printer) and an external antenna connector.
All of the APs in the AirPort family have only one radio (an embedded Orinoco Silver card in the Graphite, an AirPort card in the Snow, and an “Extreme” mini-PCI card in the Extreme model). If you are thinking of adding a do-it-yourself antenna to a Graphite or Snow model, you definitely aren’t the first. Take a look at the following URLs for details on how to retrofit an antenna onto ...
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