*Average of 3 transfers

The fastest Extreme ABS protcol (b/g) is 4-5 times the b-only protocol. The same advantage is obtained over the snow ABS while downloading the folder to Big Al and twice that when uploading the folder to the DP1.42. The best throughput obtained by the Extreme ABS is 25.1 mbps (160x8/51) as expected.

It is surprising to us that the fastest transfers occurred using the dual b/g compatible protocol. Using this protocol, computers with original b-only AirPort cards can join the network as well as the newer AirPort Extreme cards which can join either "g" networks or "b" networks. In our test, there were no computers other than Big Al on the AirPort network. We thought the g-only protocol would be the fastest but the signal strength curiously dipped from a solid 4 arcs to 3 arcs during the transfer and returned to 4 only when the transfer ended. This happened during all six g-only trials which resulted in the transfer time varying substantially, i.e. from 59 to 77 seconds. The times for other protocol trials were all within a second or two of the average.

We were also surprised at how long the snow base station took to upload the folder from Big Al to the DP1.42. It took exactly twice as long on average as the reverse direction. There were some differences in timing between directions in the Extreme ABS trials but they were not consisently in one direction and nowhere near the magnitude of the snow ABS trials.

In summary, Apple's AirPort Extreme lives up to its promise of significantly increasing throughput. Our fastest average is 25.1 mbps for the newer 802.11g protocol, more than a 4x gain over the older 802.11b protocol. Compatibility with the older protocol is also high. Our 14" iBook and G4 Cube with older regular AirPort cards, while slower, still work perfectly on the network with no perceptible performance issues.