Differences between older and newer Airport Express
Last week I was visiting friends in Washington DC and I set up a wireless network consisting of a new Airport Extreme and five Airport Express units as extenders. The new network was connected directly to the Verizon FIOS modem which had performed unsatisfactorily in the large house.
Four of these AEs were two years old and a fifth was bought new. The network setup was easy using the new iOS-style Airport Utility (v6.0) on the Mac (or on the iPad). We were able to choose to use the 5GHz network or the 2.4GHz and managed to get all AEs on the faster band.
Enthused by this success, I returned to London and decided to check my home network which consists of a two-year-old Airport Extreme and four AEs, all of which are at least four years old. I had not checked the network since the introduction of AU 6.0. I was disappointed that none of the AE's could be edited using the new Airport Utility v6.0. I had to download AU 5.6 in order to be able to inspect the settings on these old units. I did update the firmware on the old units but this made no difference.
While everything is working, and the old AE's appear to be connected to the 5GHz network, I would like to ask if there is any advantage in buying new AEs and would there be any performance improvement? I assume, from my recent experience, that the newer AEs differ from the early units. How do the earlier units differ from the later?