Looking for streaming WiFi router for mostly Apple products

[coxhaus]

If you are talking security then Cisco is up there with the best of them. Cisco is well aware of what is going on in the internet and networking community. Probably better than most home devices.

 

[sfx2000]

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.

 

[vdemarco]

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.

Just to add something here, i have an asus house and am primarily macOS/ios and everything is working really well.

I know nothing about synology products, so my comment is really only that Asus stuff is pretty good here.

 

[avtella]

The R7800 gets updates every 2 months or so and do fix vulnerabilities in those updates. It is true their core firmware uses outdated packages that they try to patch when vulnerabilities are known. But Netgear usually does not provide much in terms of advanced user options. QoS was an issue for a few updates which was finally fixed. Honestly if you just want something that works out of the box and don’t wanna tinker with any advanced settings any of the Netgear or Asus units will be fine.

The Synology RT2600ac is the same hardware but has better firmware from what I’ve heard. Performance wise the Qualcomm QCA 9984 WiFi chipset in the RT2600ac/R7800 is probably the best in the ac crop.

I would not buy any of the new ax/WiFi 6 routers regardless of brand, as you have nothing to gain with almost no ax clients and the routers don’t support all aspects of ax/WiFi 6 standard anyway as the current crop are draft routers so you’d kinda be wasting money as at the moment they are just glorified ac units. To top it off they still have issues with stability under certain conditions/certain clients.

Stick to a tried and tested ac unit AC86U/R7800/RT2600ac.

 

[sfx2000]

Performance wise the Qualcomm QCA 9984 WiFi chipset in the RT2600ac/R7800 is probably the best in the ac crop.

Qualcomm-Atheros absolutely nailed 802.11ac Wave 2, providing better solutions than other vendors, and garnered much of that business...

Broadcom's big success was 802.11ac Wave 1 - and dominated the market at the time, getting design wins with all major vendors - their Wave2 solutions have had some success.

 

[thannon]

***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

 

[L&LD]

***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

You may find that adjusting the antennae will give you better, overall, performance, but that is not my experience with the latest routers. If the router and the devices are (mostly) on the same level (and not on different floors), then straight up should give the best response from them.

With the antennae straight up, turn off Auto Control Channel and select a channel (only use 1, 6, or 11 for the 2.4GHz band and simply try all the channels available on the 5GHz band) and make sure to put the Channel Bandwidth to 20MHz for 2.4 and 20/40/80 for the 5GHz band.

For that furthest device, choose one band (the one that is the most stable and gives the best throughput and responsiveness) and 'forget' the other band's connection to stop it from vacillating between the two.

Have a look at my M&M Config guide for possibly more tips too. Please see my signature below for the link.

 

[sfx2000]

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)?

Stick the antenna's all straight up and aligned... because MIMO and Multiple Path...

Since you're Apple centric and I warned you about Asus - Asus doesn't put any extra effort to ensure that Apple devices work properly on their router AP's



Enjoy