Messy Network, wireless upgrade R7000/AC68U/Airport Extreme

[Chunkers]

Router and wireless upgrade
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Most of my family are Apple fans (not me as it happens) and due to Xmas and other reasons we now have a bunch of 11ac wireless devices in the house and I would like to upgrade our wireless and routing. Currently I have a Billion 7800N, the wireless on which which has recently failed and been repaired (the usual problem) but is now starting to show signs of trouble again.

My ADSL line is quite noisy and the Billion modem does a good job, we are due to move house within the next 2 years so I thought I would upgrade our network and bridge the billion modem to a router.

I have a Gigabit network with a fairly large number (for a family) of wired and wireless devices, I would guess 5-6 PC's, 10 Apple devices, 5 Android devices, 5-6 TV's, 2 x NASes many of which are using different wireless standards going back to my Squeezebox which is wireless "B". My network is quite messy, it has homehub connections for the bedrooms upstairs and an additional WAP to compensate for the Billions lack of range, it is kind of grown in a disorganised way as I added bits to fix individual issues. I am hopeful I will be able rationalise things with a better range / faster wireless network.

I would like to buy something which will last me a good few years so have been looking at the Netgear R7000 and the Asus AC68U and am having trouble deciding between the two of them.

The Netgear seems to get the the edge slightly in the reviews I read but I imagine both will do the job for me? Do they both play nice with Apple stuff?

I haven't ruled out an Airport Extreme but the performance seems a bit worse overall - are there any real advantages for the Apple users in the house?

Could anyone offer me any insight? Advice appreciated.

Chunks

EDIT : After a bit more research I decided to sacrifice a bit of performance and go for the better user interface so I ordered an Asus AC68U today

 

[L&LD]

The RT-AC68U is the right decision. Performance matters, of course. But what matters most is usability. The Netgear products are 'forgotten' in a matter of months by the manufacturer, while the Asus products still have legs many years later. As long as the hardware can support the new features that become available, Asus, and better yet; RMerlin, offers it to the older models too.

I think you made a wise choice. Enjoy your new router.

 

[sfx2000]

The 68U is a good choice - the Airport Extreme AC will have similar performance at 2.4GHz, and perhaps a bit lower at 5GHz...

Upsides for the 68U - mature platform on the high-end - it's settled down quite nicely. In many ways, it's superior to the 87U device. Use it for basic routing, it's one of the best...

Upsides for the Airport Extreme AC - stable, fast - it's based on the same core chipset as the 68U from Asus - better integration with iOS/OSX perhaps, doesn't support USB3.0, but based on results, there isn't much difference. Another upside for the Airport Extreme is ease for extending networks, and their printer sharing is very good - AirPlay compatibility between Macs/PC's running iTunes and AppleTV's/iOS devices is good here as well...

alt choice - Linksys WRT1900ac - it's a beast - very good RF performance across both 2.4 and 5 GHz, excellent SMB performance across eSATA and USB3 if you're into that.

 

[Samir]

I think beyond just getting a new router, you really need to make out a network map for your setup and identify the bottlenecks and approach the band-aids with real solutions that can be implemented at some point.

I don't think any network is ever finished as they can have different demands on them as things change. But it's always important to try to build it out properly.