Orbi with AirPort Extreme?

[GroupJ]

I'm not sure if this is the correct thread for this question but:

Based on the mesh network article I'm considering adding the orbi to our home studio network to take the place of the 2013 Airport extreme/Airport express(2nd gen) that is not cutting it anymore for the wireless needs of the home. After reading another article about having each of the devices in the network only doing one job, I wondering if I should leave the airport extreme in the network as just a router & make the orbi an AP. Although it does not appear from the review & comments that the airport is a good routing device. Would I better to double up on the switch or buy something like the ubiquiti edgerouter x rather than use the Airport or the orbi for routing?

My set up is:
comcast business cable mode set to bridge mode
2013 airport extreme (routing & wireless)
netgear GS724t v3

The house has six ethernet outlets, four in the same room (workstations) & two more that run to other rooms (tv & a playstation). In addition to wanting the better coverage for the wireless for our home uses, my biggest concern is always the data flow between the workstations and a ReadyNAS business pro NAS that has all of our files on it. I'm wondering if I have been making a big mistake having the Airport do the routing for all of these years anyway. We have had some problems while working on large photoshop files across the network & that may have been the culprit.

Any advice would be helpful. I was very happy when I found this site. I have been looking for a good resource about small networks & have been reading a bunch of the older articles. I have been stringing together Macs since 1994 for our business without anything other than a basic knowledge of networking.

 

[michael814]

If I'm not mistaken, "routing performance" only comes into play with WAN traffic. Wired LAN-only traffic doesn't go through the router portion of the device, but rather is just sent directly on its way through the switch(es). I would personally just go with the Orbi rather than incorporating the AE as a separate router, unless the AE has a specific routing feature that you need.

 

[GroupJ]

If I'm not mistaken, "routing performance" only comes into play with WAN traffic. Wired LAN-only traffic doesn't go through the router portion of the device, but rather is just sent directly on its way through the switch(es). I would personally just go with the Orbi rather than incorporating the AE as a separate router, unless the AE has a specific routing feature that you need.

Thank you for the reply. It does seem simpler to do it that way.

 

[sfx2000]

Can't say much about Orbi, but having two AP-Extreme AC's, they're in AP mode these days, and there, they do a decent enough job - backend is pfSense and a Netgear managed switch...

I own my own modem (SB6183), and the two Airports are backhauled across ethernet - Orbi wouldn't do much for me, but in your case, perhaps...