With OS X Leopard the airport base station utility is now started by default and will run as a background process occasionally connecting to Akamai servers to check for updates. I don’t use an Airport base station and I’d like to minimise the number of processes with open network ports in the interests of security I’d like to disable this ‘feature’, here’s how: Open Airport Utility, it won’t find any base stations (obviously) but you can still open the preferences window, uncheck the following three items:

• Check for updates when opening AirPort Utility
• Check for updates: Weekly
• Monitor Apple wireless devices for problems

Doing this should both shut down the Airport agent and prevent it from automatically starting the next time you log in.