does 802.11n airport extreme WIFI work, if offline

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does 802.11n airport extreme WIFI work, if offline

hoping to setup up a secondary "closed network" WIFI backup system with partitioned hard drive attached, exclusively used for local wireless backups (Time Machine, CCC, media)

there would be no need for this to be online, just a WPA2 Personal setup

thanks

Posted on Dec 4, 2022 7:14 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Bob Timmons

Community+ 2024

Level 10

168,038 points

Dec 6, 2022 8:32 PM in response to Servi

In the past, I have been able to back up using Time Machine on 2 Macs to a drive connected to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme, but the drive was not using separate partitions.

What you want to do "should" work, but I don' have the equipment here to duplicate the setup that you are asking about to test to see if things "will" work.

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Answer 2

Servi Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 6, 2022 3:29 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Bob -

If I run LAN-cabled Airport Extreme in bridge-mode,

(w/ USB external HDD/ multi-partitions/ all Extended-Journaled)

will each laptop,

(using main Router WIFI-to-LAN connect - great point re swap-logging WIFI systems)

always "see" their individually assigned Time Machine partitions (CCC partitions)?

thanks

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Answer 3

Dec 4, 2022 7:35 AM in response to Servi

This will "work", assuming that you understand that you will have to log off of your current Wi-Fi Internet connection and manually log on to your "local" network.....and.....you don't mind being pestered with messages from AirPort Utility that the AirPort does not have an Internet connection.

Things would be simpler, and your backups would occur automatically if you simply connect the AirPort Extreme to your current network. Backups only occur over your local network.....not over the Internet.....so there is really very little to be gained by trying to set up a separate local network that requires you to manually log off of your normal network, log on to the local network to back up, then manually log off and log back on to your normal network.

Please understand that the AirPort Extreme uses an ancient USB 2.0 port, so backups are going to run at about half speed compared to newer USB designs. The USB port only supports a hard drive that is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled), so you won't be able to use newer formats like APFS with the drive attached to the AirPort Extreme.

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Answer 4

Servi Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 9, 2022 1:33 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Thanks Bob - "it's working, it's working!" - log-ins to the airport extreme set up w/ User/PW handshake, in both Time Machine auto-backups or carbon copy cloner periodic backups at the same time - all 4 Macs are finding their own partitions on the attached USB/HDD, and "go". The LAN is handling all the through-put (a couple of switches here and there). Faster than the initial thought using the private WIFI - thanks again.

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