Replacing AirPort Extreme N

[mattmo]

Looking to replace our AirPort Extreme N with either a linksys E9500 or a WRT3200ACM. Not sure which one to go with. I'm looking for wireless distance over speed and I see you can put high gain antennas on the WRT. Any help would be appreciated. We have an iPad Pro. iPad mini. 4 Vizio Smart TVs. 2 iPhone 7's. 2 MacBook Pros

 

[sfx2000]

Replace it with an Airport Extreme AC - it's a plug in and play solution there...

Shop the Apple refurb store - prices there are pretty good compared to retail, and same warranty...

 

[mattmo]

Would the linksys offer better range with its external antennas? Don't want to buy outdated tech

 

[sfx2000]

Would the linksys offer better range with its external antennas? Don't want to buy outdated tech

Those internal antennas are just as good as any external antennas...

All have to pass FCC approval...

when was the last time you saw a mobile phone with an external antenna?

Probably about 8 to 10 years ago - so which tech approach is outdated?

 

[MichaelCG]

There for sure "can" be a difference in internal vs external antenna. There can also be no difference...it all depends on the design and the use case for which one is more appropriate. Some external antenna are nothing more than for show.

The overall radiated energy is what is approved and in theory no different across the different antennas. What is different is how that energy is radiated. The higher the gain antenna....usually the more narrow or more directional the beam becomes. So if you have low gain antennas on an AP sitting in the middle of the house, there is probably decent signal on the floor below, the floor above, and the floor it resides on up to a certain distance. If you put high gain uni-directional antennas on the same device, the signal strength above and below will probably suffer, but the range will be better on the same floor.

I put higher gain antennas on my both of my RT-N66U and got mixed results. The signal strength and speeds between the two (one as an AP and one as a Media Bridge) were greatly improved. However I now noticed I had more dead zones in various parts of the house.

Also keep in mind just because your router can blast a signal a long distance doesn't mean your portable device has the same ability to blast one back. You didn't provide nearly enough detail on your use case and environment you want to cover to really provide any guidance.

 

[mattmo]

I have a 1200 sqft ranch with a large deck off of the back. I'm really just looking for a router that will give me decent signal back there. The one I have now cuts in and out. I would prefer to just replace the router and be done and not have to run another access point. The distance between router and deck is about 35-40 ft with a couple walls to go through

 

[sfx2000]

I have a 1200 sqft ranch with a large deck off of the back. I'm really just looking for a router that will give me decent signal back there. The one I have now cuts in and out. I would prefer to just replace the router and be done and not have to run another access point. The distance between router and deck is about 35-40 ft with a couple walls to go through

Two Airport Extreme AC's cover 26,000 sq ft of yard - stick built house, stucco on the outside - inside the 1600 sq ft house, 5GHz pretty much everywhere, and 2.4GHz as the fallback...

 

[mattmo]

Two Airport Extreme AC's cover 26,000 sq ft of yard - stick built house, stucco on the outside - inside the 1600 sq ft house, 5GHz pretty much everywhere, and 2.4GHz as the fallback...

Took your advice and ordered a refurb from Best Buy. Now on to my next problem. Netflix on Vizio smart tv that is connected to 10/100 router keeps reporting a connection speed of only 16-17Mbps on the Netflix app when internet speed shows as 58-62Mbps via Speedtest on laptop.

 

[sfx2000]

Took your advice and ordered a refurb from Best Buy. Now on to my next problem. Netflix on Vizio smart tv that is connected to 10/100 router keeps reporting a connection speed of only 16-17Mbps on the Netflix app when internet speed shows as 58-62Mbps via Speedtest on laptop.

As long as it plays fine - who cares?

Netflix isn't that demanding on bandwidth, as long as things are constant... and even then, the app is pretty friendly there even, as it's download/buffer on the streams..

 

[MichaelCG]

Took your advice and ordered a refurb from Best Buy. Now on to my next problem. Netflix on Vizio smart tv that is connected to 10/100 router keeps reporting a connection speed of only 16-17Mbps on the Netflix app when internet speed shows as 58-62Mbps via Speedtest on laptop.

Good chance speedtest is hitting a server that is closer to you than what Netflix is hitting. Keep in mind max speeds on fast Internet is not always easy to achieve from a single stream/system. Unless you are doing 4k streams, your speeds are more than enough for Netflix.

 

[Elisha]

The max I have seen for 4k HDR streams on Netflix is 23Mbps so far.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sfx2000]

Netflix used to have a couple of test "movies" that folks could use to see the actual bandwidth used for that session - those were for standard def and a full HD - wonder if they did one for 4K...

fast.com - this is provided by Netflix, and hosted at the same distibution farms as their content servers...

https://fast.com/