If you need a cheap gig switch I bought 5 Dlink 5 ports at Fry's for less than $20 each. They have been running for several months now with no issues. They are at my daughter's business. I use a Cisco switch for my core switch which the Dlinks plug into. So the Dlinks are doing light duty work but they seem to work. I prefer Cisco but my daughter did not have the money for Cisco switches and we needed a lot of them.
DLink unmanaged switches are a great deal, and very good quality... Linksys unmanaged are also good - look for the SE3008/SE3005 - street prices on them are less than $50USD.
@thannon - now that Airports have gone end-of-life, many in the Mac community have gone with the Synology RT2600ac
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/RT2600ac
Synology tends to be very Mac/iOS oriented, and have heard nothing but good news about the RT2600ac - Netgear R7800 is also a decent choice, but I would pick the 2600ac.
Asus is ok, however, if one is primarily a Apple household, consider that MacOS/iOS is not a priority for Asus, and we get a fair amount of questions that relate to things like Bonjour networking and the like.
Performance wise the Qualcomm QCA 9984 WiFi chipset in the RT2600ac/R7800 is probably the best in the ac crop.
***UPDATE***
I appreciate all the input given thus far and have made a selection.
So... I decided on the ASUS RT-AC86U which I picked up on eBay for $125 shipped. I reset it to factory default and downloaded the latest firmware Version 3.0.0.4.384.45713. It is in the same location as the old wi-fi router. We are getting much better thruput to all devices (probably from moving from "n" to "ac"). One of the nice features compared to the old router is that I can see what band is being used and the signal strength for each connected device.
It appears the furthest (and most important) device seems to be vacillating between 2.4 and 5.0 GHz. It seems I am just on the edge of adequate proximity. I am going to relocate the router to a more central location to determine if this will improve things). This move will require me to do some wiring.
It is my understanding this router implements beam-forming techniques. Are there any guidelines or recommendations as to the orientation of the 3 antennas (the manual just said put the outer ones at a 45 degree angle)?
Regards - Tommy
t appears the furthest (and most important) device seems to be vacillating between 2.4 and 5.0 GHz. It seems I am just on the edge of adequate proximity. I am going to relocate the router to a more central location to determine if this will improve things). This move will require me to do some wiring.
It is my understanding this router implements beam-forming techniques. Are there any guidelines or recommendations as to the orientation of the 3 antennas (the manual just said put the outer ones at a 45 degree angle)?
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