AirPort is a discontinued line of wireless routers and network cards developed by Apple Inc. using Wi-Fi protocols.

[3] AirPort debuted in 1999, as "one more thing" at Macworld New York, with Steve Jobs surfing the web on an iBook using wireless internet technology for the very first time in a public demo of an Apple laptop.

The initial offering consisted of an optional expansion card for Apple's new line of iBook notebooks and an AirPort Base Station.

The original AirPort system allowed transfer rates up to 11 Mbit/s and was commonly used to share Internet access and files between multiple computers.

AirPort Extreme allows theoretical peak data transfer rates of up to 54 Mbit/s, and is fully backward-compatible with existing 802.11b wireless network cards and base stations.

In 2004, Apple released the AirPort Express base station as a "Swiss Army knife" multifunction product.

The device includes software to allow any computer running a reasonably recent version of Mac OS or Windows to access the disk as a shared volume.

[6] In October 2009, Apple unveiled the updated AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule products with antenna improvements (the 5.8 GHz model).

It was not uncommon to see wireless networks composed of several types of AirPort base station serving old and new Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and Linux systems.

Apple's software drivers for AirPort Extreme also supported some Broadcom and Atheros-based PCI Wireless adapters when fitted to Power Mac computers.

[9] Bloomberg News noted that "Apple rarely discontinues product categories"[9] and that its decision to leave the business was "a boon for other wireless router makers.

[10] The original AirPort Base Station (known as Graphite, model M5757, part number M7601LL/B) features a dial-up modem and an Ethernet port.

It employs a Lucent WaveLAN Silver PC Card as the Radio, and uses an embedded AMD Élan SC410 processor.

It features a second Ethernet port when compared to the Graphite design, allowing for a shared Internet connection with both wired and wireless clients.

Also new (but available for the original model via software update) was the ability to connect to and share America Online's dial-up service—a feature unique to Apple base stations.

This model is based on Motorola's PowerPC 855 processor and contained a fully functional original AirPort Card, which can be removed and used in any compatible Macintosh computer.

A connected printer is made available via Bonjour's "zero configuration" technology and IPP to all wired and wireless clients on the network.

A second model (M8930LL/A) lacking the modem and external antenna port was briefly made available, but then discontinued after the launch of AirPort Express (see below).

It features a built-in design that, when used with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard, automatically makes incremental data backups.

Acting as a wireless file server, AirPort Time Capsule can serve to back up multiple Macs.

On October 20, 2009, Apple unveiled the updated Time Capsule with antenna improvements resulting in wireless performance gains of both speed and range.

It is based on a Broadcom 802.11g chipset and is housed in a custom form factor, but is electrically compatible with the Mini PCI standard.

This distinction is mostly of concern to those who run other operating systems such as Linux on MacBooks, as different cards require different device drivers.

In early 2007, Apple announced that most Intel Core 2 Duo-based Macs, which had been shipping since November 2006, already included AirPort Extreme cards compatible with the draft-802.11 Draft-N specification.

Apple also offered an application to enable 802.11 Draft-N functionality on these Macs for a fee of $1.99, or free with the purchase of an AirPort Extreme base station.

The second-generation model (known as Dual Ethernet or Snow) AirPort base station, like most other Wi-Fi products, used 40-bit or 128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP).

AirPort Extreme and Express base stations retain this option, but also allow and encourage the use of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and, as of July 14, 2005, WPA2.

AirPort Disk can be accessed from Windows and Linux as well as Mac OS X using the SMB/CIFS protocol for FAT volumes, and both SMB/CIFS and AFP for HFS+ partitions.

Recent firmware versions cause the internal disk and any external USB drives to sleep after periods of time as short as 2 minutes.

[citation needed] The AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule will recognize multiple disks connected via a USB hub.