Airport Base Station Hardware: It can be hard to tell one model from another because Apple regularly improves the innards but not necessarily the box. Here's a table to help keep track:
| Base Station |
Model Number |
Introduced |
Discontinued |
Description |
Protocol |
Backward Compatibility |
Users |
Ethernet |
| Airport Base Station v1 |
M5757 |
07/1999 |
11/2001 |
Original (Graphite) UFO |
B |
none |
10 |
10BaseT |
| Airport Base Station v2 |
M8440 |
11/2001 |
01/2003 |
Dual Ethernet (Snow) UFO |
B |
none |
50 |
10BaseT |
| Airport Express v1 |
A1084 |
06/2004 |
03/2008 |
power brick form factor, built-in plug |
G |
B |
10 |
100BaseT |
| Airport Express v2** |
A1264 |
03/2008 |
06/2012 |
N wifi protocol upgrade |
N |
A,B,G |
10 |
100BaseT |
| Airport Express Gen 2* |
A1392 |
06/2012 |
04/26/18 |
AppleTV form factor |
N |
A,B,G |
50 |
100BaseT |
| Airport Extreme UFO v1 |
A1034 |
01/2003 |
01/2007 |
Mirrored Apple logo UFO, no modem |
G |
B |
50 |
100BaseT |
| Airport Extreme UFO v2 |
A1034 |
01/2003 |
01/2007 |
External Antenna socket |
G |
B |
50 |
100BaseT |
| Airport Extreme UFO v3 |
A1034 |
04/2004 |
01/2007 |
Antenna socket and Power over Ethernet |
G |
B |
50 |
100BaseT |
| Airport Extreme v1 |
A1143 |
01/2007 |
08/2007 |
Rectangular, single band (2.4 GHz) |
N |
A,B,G |
50 |
100BaseT |
| Airport Extreme v2 |
A1143 |
08/2007 |
03/2009 |
Gigabit Ethernet, Dual Band (2.4 & 5GHz) |
N |
A,B,G |
50 |
1000BaseT |
| Airport Extreme v3 |
A1301 |
03/2009 |
10/2009 |
Simultaneous Dual Band, Guest Network |
N |
A,B,G |
50 |
1000BaseT |
| Airport Extreme v4** |
A1354 |
10/2009 |
06/2011 |
IPv6 mode added |
N |
A,B,G |
50 |
1000BaseT |
| Airport Extreme v5** |
A1408 |
06/2011 |
06/2013 |
June, 2011 |
N |
A,B,G |
50 |
1000BaseT |
| Airport Extreme Gen 3* |
A1521 |
06/2013 |
04/26/18 |
Tower form factor, June 2013 |
AC |
A,B,G,N |
50 |
1000BaseT |
* Final Model ** Recommended Older Model
Airport Cards: Before Apple started building wireless onto the motherboard, there were B, and later G, versions of the Airport card that could be added to your computer in order to give it wireless capabilities. The Snow (Dual Ethernet) version of the Airport Base Station contains a standard Airport (B) Card that can be salvaged and used in a