Advice for Mostly Apple Devices

[whsbuss]

I have all Apple here and have no issues for the past 2 years with my Asus 68U. As far as the AE is concerned, it just didn't give me the coverage I needed here. Airport Express is only 11n and not ac so why bother. Strange Apple hasn't released any new networking hardware in a few years.

 

[sfx2000]

Strange Apple hasn't released any new networking hardware in a few years.

The Extreme is AC1900 class - so they basically have not needed to introduce new HW... none of their clients support more than that at a wifi level...

Would like to see the little guy (AP Express) bumped up to 802.11ac (along with GBe) - but I'm at a point where that's wishful thinking...

Airports are a small part of Apple's bottom line - they stay in the business as long as they want - but there is a certain method to their approach - managing multiple AP's in a single application, and OS Server has some very interesting contributions to how Airports behave...

 

[Lalato]

Are you sure the Airport Extreme is AC1900? I can't find any specs that confirm that.

 

[sfx2000]

Are you sure the Airport Extreme is AC1900? I can't find any specs that confirm that.

It is... Apple doesn't chase the same specs that the router oriented folks do...

AC1300 in 5GHz - this is 3*3:3...
N450 in 2.4GHz - this is the same...

Some vendors do non-standard 2.4GHz modulations to pump up the numbers... Apple is spec-compliant, and they do have issues with 2.4GHz wide channels, but generally, consider them AC1900 based on client capabilities.

From a HW perspective Airport Extreme AC/Netgear R7000/Asus RT-AC68Uis basically be the same thing - difference here are SW.. and antenna's - and there, the airports have gone down an interesting path that works well within limits..

 

[whsbuss]

It is... Apple doesn't chase the same specs that the router oriented folks do...

AC1300 in 5GHz - this is 3*3:3...
N450 in 2.4GHz - this is the same...

Some vendors do non-standard 2.4GHz modulations to pump up the numbers... Apple is spec-compliant, and they do have issues with 2.4GHz wide channels, but generally, consider them AC1900 based on client capabilities.

From a HW perspective Airport Extreme AC/Netgear R7000/Asus RT-AC68Uis basically be the same thing - difference here are SW.. and antenna's - and there, the airports have gone down an interesting path that works well within limits..

Great point. For my environment its the antennas (or lack there of) which reduces the number of dead spots. That was my main issue with the AE

 

[bodean]

Having never tried the R7000, but owning a generation 6 Airport Extreme, and a Netgear R8000, I find them to be pretty on par with each other. The lack of firmware/software updates to the R8000 is horrible IMO. I go back and forth between both routers (will end up selling one eventually). The Airport Extreme has been great, but I found the Wifi speed to be slower than that of the R8000 on my network (plus I have gigabit internet service now with comcast, so I would like to get the best speeds possible. The only devices hard wired into my router is my xbox one, and my Synology Diskstation. Everything else is wireless (maybe 25-30 wifi devices on the network)