Time Capsule – First Impression

Believe it or not, up until yesterday I had been using one of the original Linksys 802.11b wireless routers for my home wireless network. That’s right, that’s a lower case B after that 11. Hey it worked, and it worked great. I really had no real need to upgrade to later models as they became available. Now that I’m starting to do more copying between machines on the wireless network and with my internet speed being continuously bumped up quite nicely from my cable provider in addition to the need for a more robust and seamless backup solution, I managed to justify the purchase of the 500GB flavor of Apple’s Time Capsule router and wireless backup product. This was not only my first time with using an Apple AirPort device but also Time Machine which I’ve been very curious to see in action (I could never see myself using my external USB disk with Time Machine on my laptop).

Setup, unsurprisingly, was a complete breeze. I was surfing within minutes of powering the unit up and kicked off the initial Time Machine sync before going to bed by hard wiring it to the unit for increased speed. Time Machine seems decent enough and so far the wireless connectivity has been stable and working just fine. No real change from my old Linksys router with the exception of the increased speed. Then today I had the need to VPN into work to get some work done.

The VPN solution my employer utilizes is the standard Microsoft one (the one built into the Windows Server operating system). I’ve never had any trouble using it before on my Mac. Not so much with Time Capsule. I still haven’t figured out why I am unable to connect to the VPN. I tried mapping ports and then simply put my machine on the DMZ by making it the default host in the AirPort Utility configuration. No luck. A quick search yields many others experiencing similar problems but nothing quite as unique as mine. I’m not going to give up yet. I’m hoping I’m missing something quite obvious or perhaps a new firmware update will kick it in. Unfortunately for now I won’t be able to get rid of my trusty Linksys and need to keep it hooked up merely for the purposes of VPN. Other than that though I’m quite pleased with the product and love the fact that for the most part I don’t need to spend that much time and effort to ensure I have a good backup at all times.