AEBS router or ASUS WL-500W

[sjacarter]

My router just died and looking at getting a new one. I Want something that will be future proof (last next couple of years). I also want something with a built in USB port so i can hook up a network printer and HD. I decided on the Apple AEBS or ASUS WL-500W. I can get the AEBS for 179 and tax and the ASUS WL-500W for 150 and tax (both in Canadian funds)

Which one do you think i should get? are there any other routers that i should consider?

It ill be used for 2 wireless G devices ( 1 macbook and 1 HP laptop) and a Desktop PC (wired)

Thanks

 

[macleod199]

My router just died and looking at getting a new one. I Want something that will be future proof (last next couple of years). I also want something with a built in USB port so i can hook up a network printer and HD. I decided on the Apple AEBS or ASUS WL-500W. I can get the AEBS for 179 and tax and the ASUS WL-500W for 150 and tax (both in Canadian funds)

Which one do you think i should get? are there any other routers that i should consider?

It ill be used for 2 wireless G devices ( 1 macbook and 1 HP laptop) and a Desktop PC (wired)

Thanks

Personally, I've found the Apple Airport software to be miles ahead in ease of use compared to any other router I've used, although I've never used an Asus. It was worth the extra to me.

Unfortunately, there's a few bugs in the latest firmware for the Airport Extreme (losing the AirDisk a lot, NAT-PMP not working), and I've had to roll back to 7.1.1. Which you can't do on the new gigabit model.

 

[mkrishnan]

That Asus sounds intriguing... is there Mac software for the universal USB capabilities? (It says you can put a webcam on the router!?)

Also can it host a disk in HFS+? I would think that would be the single largest reason to go Apple.

 

[sjacarter]

The Asus UI is not very nice. I like apple products, they tend to be expensive but the attention to detail is great.

Anyone else out their try the asus router and have any advice?

 

[cube]

http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17150

 

[Matek]

Also can it host a disk in HFS+? I would think that would be the single largest reason to go Apple.

Hmm, I'd say that's irrelevant because you access the drive over the network. The network protocols take care of it. We could compare it to accessing a drive on a windows box - even if it's a NTFS drive, you don't have any trouble writing to it (if you have the rights), because your mac doesn't actually access the filesystem, the computer on the other side does the "hard work".

So you can simply format the drive you want to use to whatever FS is supported by the Asus and it don't worry about it.

Anyway, I'm facing a similar dillema - AEBS vs. Asus WL-500W. Since the latter is much cheaper my main question would be wheter its "n" support is compatible with Macs. I know the "n" standard isn't completed yet and I have had trouble with mixing wireless network products, each with its own speed boosting technology.

 

[mkrishnan]

^^ that's not entirely accurate.

It's true that the router acts as a NAS. It's not necessarily true that its format is completely independent of its behavior when mounted on your computer. As long as it is a POSIX compliant FS and supports arbitrarily large files, it should do most things, but for instance, Apple is very selective about what Time Machine will run on. Right now, they're not even advertising that it will work with Airdisk in the beginning (only directly mounted HFS partitions or HFS drives served from other computers running Leopard). It has however previously been promised that Airdisk and TM would work together. No guarantee at all that any other NASes will work with TM. Although really, we have to wait and see what Leopard looks like this weekend.