Apple AirPort Extreme (802.11ac) Reviewed

[sfx2000]

I was expecting something at WWDC, as they've typically released in June any HW updates on the Airports (they also tend to favor March and October from time to time), so maybe in Oct we might see something...

For the most part, they're pretty current with the mainstream - 3 stream 11ac for the Extreme/Time Capsule, but like I said, the Express is showing it's age as an 11n 2-stream unit (basically N600 class) with 100BaseT only..

 

[Dimitris Krekoukias]

The wireless test results are posted in the Charts.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...11-2_4-ghz-dn-c/1198-apple-airport-extreme-ac

Routing and storage tests will be added soon.

Results in all four test rotation positions were closer than I have seen for other routers, meaning the antenna design is not directional at all.

Range seems a bit short in 5 GHz.

I have an all-apple household and bought one of these refurbished for $130. It works amazingly well.

With the current firmware as of January 2017, and an HFS+ formatted disk, I can do 30MB/s reads from a USB2-attached HDD.

In addition, I got over 600Mbit/s using iperf and having one computer as the server with a wired connection and one using wireless ac. That seems to be 2x the speed snb got in their tests (admittedly using windows for testing and the initial firmware release).

So, if someone is dissuaded by the snb tests with the initial firmware release, don't. Especially if you have a Mac household, this works perfectly.

Disclaimer: I am NOT using it as a router but rather as an access point. I use a Ubiquiti Edgerouter X with 1.9.1 and smart queues (fq_codel + HTB) for traffic shaping.

The combo is ridiculous and I always get an A+ for the dslreports bufferbloat test.

Thx

D

 

[sfx2000]

APEX-AC is still a very nice AP - do note that they support SSID/VLAN separation...

Look for VLAN1003 on the Airport Guest-WLAN - and this works with multiple airport N and AC models on current firmware...

Pretty handy to know..