Apple Airport Extreme

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cuttime
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Apple Airport Extreme

Post by cuttime »

Possibly OT, but I have gone through several high end routers in the last year. I had a Linksys EA6500, Asus N66U, Netgear N750 and TWO Buffalo WZR 1750dhps. I steadfastly shied away from the Airport Extreme, because I was convinced that it was over priced. I had nothing but problems with the other routers, dropped connections and very poor WiFi performance. I even used WiFi analysis software to try and solve the problems. I was convinced that all WiFi routers suck, and the trick was to find one that sucked the least. After paying shipping, restocking and RMA fees I had already come dangerously close to the $185 price of the Airport, so I finally pulled the trigger and bought one. Problems solved. PERIOD. My advice: If you're in the market for a WiFi router save yourself the agony and just get the Airport.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Yep. Except for their apparent 3 year useful life in some instances.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by cuttime »

Oh, and I forgot the D-Link DIR-615 that I flashed with DD-WRT.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by ronjams »

cuttime wrote:Possibly OT, but I have gone through several high end routers in the last year. I had a Linksys EA6500, Asus N66U, Netgear N750 and TWO Buffalo WZR 1750dhps. I steadfastly shied away from the Airport Extreme, because I was convinced that it was over priced. I had nothing but problems with the other routers, dropped connections and very poor WiFi performance. I even used WiFi analysis software to try and solve the problems. I was convinced that all WiFi routers suck, and the trick was to find one that sucked the least. After paying shipping, restocking and RMA fees I had already come dangerously close to the $185 price of the Airport, so I finally pulled the trigger and bought one. Problems solved. PERIOD. My advice: If you're in the market for a WiFi router save yourself the agony and just get the Airport.

I would like to chime in and say that I just went through this same process but I had the apple airport extreme(not the one with the 802.11ac). It should be noted that you should make sure that the modem as well as the router should be up to date using the latest technology. I'm using cat6 cable between the modem and router and also the computer. My provider is Charter. Unfortunately, my computer is outdated 2008 mac pro. The router is a Asus AC1900. The selling point of this router is the ac speed which my computer can't take advantage of however I'm getting in my opinion outstanding performance over the apple airport extreme. This router is considered to be the world fastest in its class rated by PC magazine and even though I don't have a trash can mac the pages snap really fast and no lag or drop outs. I'm getting better speed than what the provider is giving me. I've had this setup for 2 months. I'm happy!!
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by cuttime »

ronjams wrote:
The router is a Asus AC1900.
I'm glad it is working for you. The reliability of this and other similar devices is questionable.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by ronjams »

cuttime wrote:
ronjams wrote:
The router is a Asus AC1900.
I'm glad it is working for you. The reliability of this and other similar devices is questionable.
It's not fair to make this statement without an explanation for example what is in your current setup? If you made changes to your setup are you now getting the performance that you're paying for? If not consider getting a repeater. Depending on where these items[modem & wireless router] are placed in your home can have a dramatic effect on the performance. If your computer or other devices are for example are on another floor away from your router remember that signal has to travel through dry wall, metal, etc. I've learned a lot from cnet and watching videos on youtube also from other people who in my opinion who were getting horrible speeds from their ISP. They made changes in their setup and even with the slow speeds are able to do gaming, downloading and streaming at the same time. When you reply, give a accurate description of what is your issue and what are you trying to do on the internet.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by mikehalloran »

The current tower design for the AirPort Extreme and the Tme Capsule improves performance even if one doesn't have a Mac or PC that supports 802.11ac wi-fi. This is because the tower design allows the three antennae to be placed in an ideal array, not possible with the flat design. The scuttlebutt is that engineering had been pushing for this a long time and was surprised that Apple finally listened.

If you have something that supports ac, it is faster than 1000T Ethernet. I clocked large file transfers and found that to be true. I didn't get the advertised 133% improvement but 120% was consistent. This is real world performance about 2.5x faster than 802.11n.

When Apple released the current design, they halted further development and reassigned the members of the design and testing team to other divisions. My son-in-law was one of those engineers.

The late 2013 MacBook Air was the first PC to support he new wi-fi. I was disappointed that the first iPad Air, released later, did not. Everything released afterwards does.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by cuttime »

My opinions, only. I don't have a lab to test these devices and I do a fair amount of research before purchasing. I'm not an extreme gamer. All I'm looking for is a router that lets me use my iPad or Kindle on the patio 25 feet away without having to run into the house and power cycle the unit, or worse, do a factory reset and reload the saved settings. The current generation of ac devices can test well in the lab, but my experience (and other anecdotal evidence) indicates a high failure rate over a relatively short period of time. I admit to working with a very small data set. YMMV.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by mikehalloran »

cuttime wrote:My opinions, only. I don't have a lab to test these devices and I do a fair amount of research before purchasing. I'm not an extreme gamer. All I'm looking for is a router that lets me use my iPad or Kindle on the patio 25 feet away without having to run into the house and power cycle the unit, or worse, do a factory reset and reload the saved settings. The current generation of ac devices can test well in the lab, but my experience (and other anecdotal evidence) indicates a high failure rate over a relatively short period of time. I admit to working with a very small data set. YMMV.
My only experience is with the current Apple products. I bought a couple Time Capsule towers the day they were released and have had no issues with them. There were some firmware updates but I never noticed any problems. Likewise, my wife's MacBook Air has performed flawlessly. Although there were a couple of firmware updates to address 802.11ac issues, we have never experienced a problem with it.

There was a Time Machine restore issue but that turned out to be a bug in Mavericks 10.9.4, not any of my three Time Capsules (one is the older flat design). OS 10.9.5 fixed the problem.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by daniel.sneed »

Just to add some experience: Never a single question with my standard Export Express. 5Ghz Wifi has always been reliable and effective here, with iPad, iPhone and MacBookPro.
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by jbyerly1 »

I've had the Airport Extreme for long time and has been rock solid. I sit out side all the time
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Re: Apple Airport Extreme

Post by bayswater »

I moved to Apple Airport boxes on the advice of ISP tech supports that read from their own support material that some other router manufacturers' equipment will autoupdate, and those updates don't always work on Macs (i.e., they do updates that work for Windows, then push out the necessary changes for Apple later). I did in fact have at least three experiences where the routers stopped working out of the blue, as per the notes they had.

I've had the Extreme and an Express running now for years without incident.
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