Help me decide

[ozgurcnbyz]

Hi,
I know that i need a good wireless router to take full advantage of my internet and local network as the ISP's router is utterly crap. I am not what you'd call an apple fan boy but i've got a lot of apple devices at home including macbooks ipads iphones and appletv. After a detailed research i came to a conclusion that asus routers are great in terms of performance. I also found out that the apples airport extreme is also a great product. I cant find any user review that states otherwise. Ppl seems to be very happy about it. Asus's RT-AC68U on the other hand gets quite a lot complaints about stability. My occupation is in IT operations and i really dont want to be spending time fixing things on the router. I just want reliable performance. So i cannot decide between asus rt-ac68u and apple airport extreme. Please also consider the fact that i am not interested all the features asus provides except for the dnsmasq which could be quite handy.
Thanks

 

[Cloud200]

Hi,
I know that i need a good wireless router to take full advantage of my internet and local network as the ISP's router is utterly crap.

Can we get a little more information than this? How many wired/wireless clients? What other devices are on this network; eg, switch, NAS, PC dedicated as a server? What kind of internet connection do you have as well as the hardware the ISP provided you?

After a detailed research i came to a conclusion that asus routers are great in terms of performance. I also found out that the apples airport extreme is also a great product. I cant find any user review that states otherwise. Ppl seems to be very happy about it. Asus's RT-AC68U on the other hand gets quite a lot complaints about stability.

https://discussions.apple.com/community/wireless/airport
Apple product reviews are very often skewed. Look at the product forums and Amazon.com 1 -3 star reviews to see for yourself that they are not infallible. This is not to say they are bad, but it is quite misleading to say there are no bad reviews.

My occupation is in IT operations and i really dont want to be spending time fixing things on the router. I just want reliable performance. So i cannot decide between asus rt-ac68u and apple airport extreme.

If you are looking at reliability as the top feature you may be looking at the wrong set of products. Try to avoid SOHO devices. SMB products is what you are looking for.

Do not be put off by the fact that these devices may be slower, that is usually the difference between business and home products within the same price range. Something has to give.

Please also consider the fact that i am not interested all the features asus provides except for the dnsmasq which could be quite handy.

Thanks

Off the top of my head at 7:30am, while watching mythbusters . . . Ubiquiti ERL + UAP and a gigabit switch should cost pretty much the same as the new airport extreme. I am not sure if that would be the best option for you, but it would definitely be reliable. As long as you keep it more or less at the default config, it should also be straightforward to set up.

 

[ozgurcnbyz]

Thanks for the response.
I have nothing but wireless clients. an apple tv, an airport express to stream music, 2 macbooks, xbox 360, 2 iphone 5s, 2 ipads. Internet connection is 100 mbps down 10 Mbps up, Fiber optic connection. ISP provided a huawei router which most the settings are hidden .
as much as reliability is important i dont think i want to lean towards the SMB products.
If you check out the user reviews on amazon.com like you said, airport extreme has a better rating than the asus rt-ac68u. I've had really awful experience with asus rt-ac66u .I am not a router geek although i am a former network engineer. I want things to be simple and reliable at home. I dont want to reboot the router everyday and follow up on new firmware. All i read about on the asus wireless forum is " clear nvram, reset factory settings, reflash etc" .
On the other hand rt-ac68u might be a different story. Just want to make sure that its wireless performance is better and more reliable than the ac66u. Dont want to make the same mistake twice is all

Can we get a little more information than this? How many wired/wireless clients? What other devices are on this network; eg, switch, NAS, PC dedicated as a server? What kind of internet connection do you have as well as the hardware the ISP provided you?



https://discussions.apple.com/community/wireless/airport
Apple product reviews are very often skewed. Look at the product forums and Amazon.com 1 -3 star reviews to see for yourself that they are not infallible. This is not to say they are bad, but it is quite misleading to say there are no bad reviews.



If you are looking at reliability as the top feature you may be looking at the wrong set of products. Try to avoid SOHO devices. SMB products is what you are looking for.

Do not be put off by the fact that these devices may be slower, that is usually the difference between business and home products within the same price range. Something has to give.



Off the top of my head at 7:30am, while watching mythbusters . . . Ubiquiti ERL + UAP and a gigabit switch should cost pretty much the same as the new airport extreme. I am not sure if that would be the best option for you, but it would definitely be reliable. As long as you keep it more or less at the default config, it should also be straightforward to set up.

 

[stevech]

Hi,
I know that i need a good wireless router to take full advantage of my internet and local network as the ISP's router is utterly crap. I am not what you'd call an apple fan boy but i've got a lot of apple devices at home including macbooks ipads iphones and appletv. After a detailed research i came to a conclusion that asus routers are great in terms of performance. I also found out that the apples airport extreme is also a great product. I cant find any user review that states otherwise. Ppl seems to be very happy about it. Asus's RT-AC68U on the other hand gets quite a lot complaints about stability. My occupation is in IT operations and i really dont want to be spending time fixing things on the router. I just want reliable performance. So i cannot decide between asus rt-ac68u and apple airport extreme. Please also consider the fact that i am not interested all the features asus provides except for the dnsmasq which could be quite handy.
Thanks

Opinion: Enterprise/professional settings likely should not use commodity consumer WiFi products. I'd think that in your IT Operations job, your organization, even small, would have a robust SOHO router that is not WiFi capable, does support VPN for remote employees, plus some local WiFi access points, likely using a real AAA server.

 

[Cloud200]

Ohhh!
I think I get it now. This is for a home network.

In this case, if you just don't want to deal with it . . . paying the apple tax may be worth it to you. Forget about 100% reliability, on electronic products its a myth. Even on $3K routers I have seen DOA lemons.
With an apple device you can just go to the nearest apple store and tell them "I am having intermittent issues once a day or so, and I can't replicate it. This issue appears on all of my (much more expensive) iMacs, Macbooks, and iPhones. I updated it to the latest firmware and did a full reset. Give me a new one." The sales droid will simply nod and comply.

This level of service is pretty much unparalleled outside of the enterprise market where the software costs more than the hardware it runs on.


Personally, I prefer going to my nearest electronics shop with a 30 day no questions asked return policy to pick stuff I am leery of up from.

 

[stevech]

Or if you can accept whatever Costco on-line or in-store has to offer, their no-questions asked policy on most all items is unparalleled. They did have to time limit returns on PCs because too many dolts were returning them after 2 years to get a free upgrade.

Apple: I too won't pay 2x or 3x for their stuff. OSX is not remarkably better than WIn 7, IMO. If I wanted to banish Win 7 (which I don't now need to do), I'd go Linux Mint.
And I don't have to drink the Apple cool-aid.

But to each his/her own!