I have been a long-time fan of Apple’s AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule and I have configured hundreds of them for clients over the years. When the new models came out, I decided to upgrade my own network and backup system at home and purchased a 3TB AirPort Time Capsule.
The setup was straightforward and the same as previous models, but I found a few new things while checking it out via AirPort Utility. First, there is a new Summary page which offers status information, including detailed statistics about connected clients that I haven’t seen before.
The next item I noticed is on the Network tab under Network Options, and is a checkbox to “Enable IGMP Snooping.” This is a way to regulate multicast data and limit it to interested clients, and may be designed to improve performance with streaming video and audio. One of my colleagues speculates that this goes hand-in-hand with the new beamforming antenna array technology, so specific clients can be targeted with just the data they need to see.
I haven’t found any documentation at Apple for this, but I found an interesting article about multicast:
I’m really loving my new AirPort Time Capsule. The speed is great, the unit is quiet, and the tower design is cool.