
Along with all the hardware updates, Apple has released a few software updates as well.
The Airport Client and Airport Utility Updates add support for the latest Airport Extreme and Time Capsule models announced earlier today and provide some further details about how dual-band networking will be implemented. The Airport Client Update helps Apple laptops work better with the dual-band networking features. The release notes succinctly explain that:
This update is recommended for all Intel-based Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.5.6. It addresses issues with roaming and network selection in dual-band environments.
The Airport Extreme features page says:
Instead of choosing one of the bands, AirPort Extreme now operates simultaneously on both bands, and your multiband devices automatically use the best available band.
I took note of this because I was curious how they were going to accomplish this feat. There isn’t any procedure (that I know of) in the 802.11n spec that specifies how a client should decide which network to join if they both have the same name (SSID). Apparently, Apple is going to roll that functionality right into their wireless drivers so the client device will decide which network to join based on the frequency band of the available networks.
This likely means that it won’t work seamlessly for Windows or Linux users on your Wi-Fi network and they will have to manually switch to the 5GHz 802.11n network if they first join the 2.4GHz 802.11b/g network. I am curious to see how Windows and Linux drivers will handle wireless network priority when there are two networks on different bands with the same SSID and WPA password. I imagine it can be set, but it would depend on the drivers and the features that the operating system exposes to the user.
I am sure it will work great for Apple users, but may disappoint those supporting mixed-platform environments. Truth be told, it is not any worse than other available solutions because everything else will continue to see two separate networks. Just something to be aware of when you wonder why it doesn’t work the same way on your netbook as it does on your MacBook Pro.
It will be a lot more interesting when we see the firmware update for the previous Airport and Time Capsule models so we can see what is different. Early speculation is that the MobileMe sharing features will be enabled on the old devices, but that dual-band networking will only be on the new devices. No word yet if Guest Networking will be available on the older Airport Extreme.
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