Replace Apple Airport Extreme (6 gen)?

[Andrew H]

So it doesn't appear that Apple is updating their Airport Extreme anytime soon, based on the news today. I've got a three year old Gen 6 that seems to be getting a bit flakey on the wifi side. Also, going gigabit internet in a few weeks, so the Extreme will be too slow for the WAN to LAN speed.

Choices: Keep Airport extreme and get 2 or three Ubitquiti AC access points.

Replace the Airport Extreme with either a Linksys WRT - 1900ACS or Asus AC-88 or 3100. Seems Asus has better stability. I'm looking for something I don't have to worry about.

I thought about a separate wired router, but they appear to be a bit complicated for me since I do use a guest network and have several ports forwarded.

I use about 45 DHCP address, including 12 wireless devices using two additional access points.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Andrew

 

[pete y testing]

I thought about a separate wired router,

going gigabit internet in a few weeks,

so if you want those giga speeds your not currently going to get them out of any domestic grade router , you will get close but not max speeds , if you wanted max speeds you would look at some form of gateway pc with server type software on it

however if you want to stick with router based control

here is the current chart of wan - lan speed

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/view

note this is with all routing and qos etc disabled , with them enabled the speed decreases considerably

as you can see the king of wan to lan is the netgear r7000

---------------------

Choices: Keep Airport extreme and get 2 or three Ubitquiti AC access points.

so the question here is what sort of wireless coverage are you after as any wireless AC router is going to beat the pants of a 3 year old gen 6 extreme

and all adding the unifi ap's will do is give you better coverage , you will still be stuck with a poor performing router

do you have ethernet run to different areas of your house in the first place to connect separate ap's to ?

bit to mull over there for you to get back to us on

pete

 

[sfx2000]

Replace the Airport Extreme with either a Linksys WRT - 1900ACS or Asus AC-88 or 3100. Seems Asus has better stability. I'm looking for something I don't have to worry about.

Not much difference between Airport Extreme AC/WRT1900ac/RT-AC88 performance wise - it's more that you have a three year old router, and it's probably close to the end of it's service life...

With your upcoming GigaBit connection, most consumer grade devices are going to be limited on the WAN side, esp. with the number of clients you potentially have accessing the WAN (45 or so...)

 

[Andrew H]

Thanks for the quick replies. I've got Ethernet run to most of the house. I'm currently using some 4th gen Airport extremes as access points, along with the 6th gen as the main router.

My daughter and wife haven't complained about speed. I just see some dropped connections from the wifi thermostat and a couple of other devices connected wirelessly to the main router.

Also, when our daughter had a several of her friends over and using the guest network, it bogged down the router. Internet speed didn't seem to be the issue, it was just too much for the router.

So I'm looking for a very stable, easy to configure router that can handle 40-50+ DHCP clients (1/2 wired), 6-8 wireless clients (other wireless will be on access points around house), easy to configure guest network and port forwarding. Most important is stability.

I'm open to any suggestions.

Thanks,

Andrew

 

[sfx2000]

Thanks for the quick replies. I've got Ethernet run to most of the house. I'm currently using some 4th gen Airport extremes as access points, along with the 6th gen as the main router.

Might be time well spent to diagram out the LAN/WLAN before making too many decisions...

Those old-school 4th Gen AP Extremes might be causing more harm than good - with WiFi, more is not necessarily better...

Any AC1900 class Router/AP can handle 50 or so clients... that includes your current AP Extreme AC...