Suggestions on an Airport Extreme(5g) replacement router?

[Timan25]

Bit of a dilemma, I currently have the Airport Extreme (mostly macs / Apple stuff in my house, so was the easiest thing to use), and my isp (LOVELY Cox cable, has added bandwidth caps).

Well with the Apple routers, you get next to no features, just stability and great performance. I have a ton of devices, that connect via lan and wirelessly, a/g/n(2.4 and 5ghz). (5 computers, 6 settop boxes, 4 consoles, 3 tablets, 3 phones, 1 voip, 1 nest, and we'll say 5 misc devices).

So I'm trying to find a router that lets me monitor bandwidth (each client, not overall) so I can manage who/what uses what amount of bandwidth each month/day/whatever. I am NOT trying to limit bandwidth, mostly want to monitor it. Also one that pretty much is top of the line in terms of performance. Price budget is about 150-200.

Also do use Time Machine and Airplay, but I assume most routers will have no issues with those.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[sfx2000]

Apple's Airport Utility has the option to see the connected data rate and protocol in use for all wireless STA's (devices) attached to it - it's under the advanced options in the old-school 5.6 versions.

If you're in the 6.0 series, click on the router - it'll again show the attached devices - mouseover the device in question and it'll show the details there as well.

If you're running on a Mac - you might consider NetUse - works with most routers that support SNMP.

http://www.netuseapp.com/

If you want to get really detailed - and have a handy linux box around - MRTG is pretty cool, as is Cacti -

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/

http://www.cacti.net/index.php

 

[sfx2000]

Also do use Time Machine and Airplay, but I assume most routers will have no issues with those.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

TimeMachine/AirPlay (and iTunes sharing) - as long as the router doesn't filter multicast on the LAN/WLAN, should be ok - some of the Linksys builds had issues there.

 

[Timan25]

Thanks for the quick responses,

Problem is it still doesn't show me how much bandwidth is being used, might show data rate and all.

Would be nice to see that say Random Device is using 2gb of bandwidth a day or what not. Would let me know if I have anything eating up bandwidth it shouldn't be.

 

[sfx2000]

Thanks for the quick responses,

Problem is it still doesn't show me how much bandwidth is being used, might show data rate and all.

Would be nice to see that say Random Device is using 2gb of bandwidth a day or what not. Would let me know if I have anything eating up bandwidth it shouldn't be.

I did some edits after you posted the reply

Check out some of the links I posted above ^^^^

Hope this helps - Apple's tools aren't that bad, and once you dig deeper, you'll find that the Airport routers have a fairly rich SNMP implementation - one of the better ones I've seen in consumer/home office/small office class of devices. Just takes some work to find the info