New for Airport Extreme (model A1408)

The terms of use agreement....which we all agreed to....do not permit us to discuss new products or software until they have been officially announced by Apple.

I find nothing in this regard by searching the Apple site.

Please help us to keep information on the support forums as accurate as possible.

Considering I ordered a APE model A1408 from apple.com/au yesterday and am holding it in my hands right now (arrived 30 minutes ago) I would say it exists and is official! 😁 Just because Apple does not choose to market a refresh, does not mean it does not exist nor is unofficial.

Couple this with the FCC evaluation that tests a 2.8 increase in signal strength (again, as factual as it gets), and I would certainly like to discuss the potential performance gains of this offical new model. I agree that 1.6x is speculative, but the output signal and new product sku are fact.

I will post my experiences with the new model later today.

Thanks for the update. I checked the Apple site again and notice a new model number....nothing else.

I guess I am wondering why the published specifications for this "new" model appear to be virtually identical to the model from last month, except for the model number.

If there were "major" improvements, seems like there would be a bit more fanfare about this somewhere. Maybe it is to come.

Note there's a new Time Capsule as well that now has a 3 TB drive option, but the footnote on performance refers to it as a "late 2009" model.

The Insider article above references FCC filings, so it's possible they refer to a different device or functionality of the new hardware that is not yet being used.

I am about to plug in the new APE this evening (I am in Australia so evening is now). I agree that the changes are not as significant as was predicted, and thus the decision by Apple to not mention the update. I am still hopeing for modest performance gains over the last gen model. Again, according the the FCC this is now a 3x3 antenna unit, which means it is built like the current crop of "450 Mbit" models from other suppliers. As Apple did not market the last gen APE as a 300Mbit model, makes sense they are not calling attention to the theoretical bump in speed to 450 this unit might be capable of. Of course this is theoretical etc., but performance should certainly not go down but up. We will only know for sure the changes when iFixit and the networking sites tear it apart and test it.

I just installed a 3TB Time Capsule for my neighbor replacing her Airport Extreme. The swap was simple. Just saved the running configuration of the Airport Extreme to the desktop, powered down and unplugged the ethernet cables, power and external USB drive on the Airport Extreme. Put the cables on the Time Capsule, plugged it in and powered up. Airport Utility showed the Time Capsule. Loaded the saved configuration into the Time Capsule and we were up and running.

Took a laptop that was getting marginal signal strength to a spot where the signal often dropped. Held down the option key and clicked on the Airport Icon in the Menu bar and noted the "RSSI" signal strength. The signal was about 10db stronger than the Airport Extreme. With the Airport Extreme this laptop was losing connections often when the signal strength approached -90db. The just released Time Capsule (at least the one she got) resulted in a stronger signal so hopefully the drops will be much less frequent.

im sorry, but the previous model, the mc340 was also a 3 x 3 unit, capable of the 450 mbps speed

another change with the new airport extreme (2011 version) it is now wifi certified for "stbc" whatever that is.

wikipedia says:

Space–time block coding is a technique used in wireless communications to transmit multiple copies of a data stream across a number of antennas and to exploit the various received versions of the data to improve the reliability of data-transfer. The fact that the transmitted signal must traverse a potentially difficult environment with scattering, reflection, refraction and so on and may then be further corrupted by thermal noise in the receiver means that some of the received copies of the data will be 'better' than others. This redundancy results in a higher chance of being able to use one or more of the received copies to correctly decode the received signal. In fact, space–time coding combines all the copies of the received signal in an optimal way to extract as much information from each of them as possible.

links

wifi certiication for late 2009 model

http://certifications.wi-fi.org/pdf_certificate.php?cid=WFA8066

wifi certfication for 2011 model

http://certifications.wi-fi.org/pdf_certificate.php?cid=WFA12148

I have a first gen simultaneous dual band AEBS when I tried the 7.5.2 firmware I found that

VPN ports would eventually block and not even a hard reset would bring the port back to life.

I bought a second generation simultaneous dual band AEBS and after a day or so the VPN ports

failed. It was running firmware 7.5.2. I took it back to the Apple store.

I downgraded the first generation AEBS to firmware 7.4.2 and it has been working

Flawlessly for the last five months.

I seem to recall reading that the newest third generation is using firmware 7.5.2.

I wonder if the hardware in the new box has been fixed to work properly with

Firmware 7.5.2.

Jerry

I installed the a1408 at home on Friday and have been running it since then. All I can really report is that it is working great. The physical unit looks identical other than the part number. The Airport utility is identical. In my case, it is replacing a Linksys 320N (which I now have dedicated as a DD-WRT VPN gateway). I definitly am getting better performance as my 320N was not simultaneous dual band. I also am getting stronger signals accross the board compared to the 320N but even this is anecdotal. I now have my main iMac running dedicated at 5Ghz (which serves most of my media) and the rest of the gear running down at 2.4Ghz.

The only way anyone will be able to really tell a difference is a networking site that runs it through a full set of comparison tests with the last gen model. Either way, I could not be happier with the performance. Straight across the board it is performing better than my 320N.

Are you refering to outgoing or incoming VPN? I used outgoing VPN (to connect to my office) with no issues, but have not setup incoming VPN (I don't actually use incoming VPN in my case).

UDP port 500 on the AEBS would fail to pass incoming packets to the machine/port specified

in the port forwarding configuration.

It took almost a month for me to figure out what the problem was...

I was not the only person to have problems with firmware 7.5.2 by any means

Jerry.

According to a knowledgeable friend, the A1408 also adds another IPv6 setting: "Router". This could be indicative of improved IPv6 support.

please inform your knowledgeable friend that this setting shows up on airport utility for windows 5.5.3 with an airport extreme 4th generation mc340ll/a (a1254) as well