AirPort Extreme / 802.11 n Question

[thecommonwealth]

My current wireless situation is painful at times (link-sys router has started to fade and is very spotty). I am looking to get the Airport Extreme base station and am curious how long it will be an above-average solution for home wireless (medium to heavy internet use from 2 users, often with simultaneous video streaming from separate netflix device).

2 questions:

1. Would you recommend a different solution than Airport Extreme?

2. How long will 802.11-n be "very-good" for Wi-Fi standards / will Airport Extreme be updated anytime soon (last update Dec 2009)?

Thank you for the help/expertise.

 

[miles01110]

It's not an "above average" solution at present. Get the WNDR-3700 instead.

 

[bt22]

I have nothing but good things to say about Airport Extreme Dual Band. I have an Apple Tv, Apple iPad, MacBook Pro, two iPhones, two windows 7 pc's and two Airport Expresses and have my TV and blu-ray player connected using cat-5 running off mine. Never have any problems. My brother in law was running a linksys constantly had problems. He switched to Airport Extreme and has not had any more problems.

my 2 cents and keep the change

 

[thecommonwealth]

It's not an "above average" solution at present. Get the WNDR-3700 instead.

I thought the AEBS clocked in fairly comparable. Personally, I am concerned with build quality, having 3 NetGear routers that failed on me within 2-8 months.

Have you owned both? Also, can you reset the WNDR-3700 remotely?

 

[wickedpapercut]

When my D-Link started to drop connections, I read through tons of reviews and found that people had complaints about nearly every router on the market. I decided to try the Airport Extreme and couldn't be happier. It's amazingly simple to set up and to administer. It never drops a connection and has a much better range than the old router. Your mileage may vary but I've been very impressed.

Your second question can only be answered with intelligent guessing. 802.11n is a relatively new standard and it could be quite some time before it's surpassed by a better standard. Will the AE be updated soon? Who knows.

 

[thecommonwealth]

When my D-Link started to drop connections, I read through tons of reviews and found that people had complaints about nearly every router on the market. I decided to try the Airport Extreme and couldn't be happier. It's amazingly simple to set up and to administer. It never drops a connection and has a much better range than the old router. Your mileage may vary but I've been very impressed.

Your second question can only be answered with intelligent guessing. 802.11n is a relatively new standard and it could be quite some time before it's surpassed by a better standard. Will the AE be updated soon? Who knows.

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

 

[conebbs]

I didn't want to start a new thread about airport extreme, so I will use this one.

Does anyone use an Airport Extreme with their Xbox, and more importantly Xbox Live?

My router (Cisco Linksys n2000) keeps dropping signal, and I have to reset it about once a week to get my NAT to "open" in certain Live enabled games (Black Ops, currently).

I current connection is wired to the router, so it won't be wireless. Does anyone already use this type of setup?

 

[jljue]

I actually bought a used AEBS (Simultaneous Dual Band), and I haven't had any troubles so far other than the first time I tried to reset it so that I can connect to it from my computer, instead of the previous owner's computer. Once I digested the instructions and realized that I was goofing up my instructions, it wasn't a problem setting it up at all. I did make the mistake (at least it sounded good at the time) of name my AEBS the same as the old router that I had already powered off (D-Link DIR-615), so on the Win7 computer, I had a hard time deleting the settings and adding the SSID back as the same. Once I got it working properly, it's been pretty solid. My MBP and iPhone 4 were painless for detecting and reconfiguring for a new router with the same name. Visitors connect to the guest VLAN easily. My Tivo is connected via Ethernet, but it didn't have any problems refreshing to get its new IP address. I haven't had time to connect to the D-Link NAS to switch it to the new network yet, but I don't think that it will be an issue to set it up for a new static IP address.

I had problems with my iPhone 4 getting enough WiFi signal to work properly in the opposite corner of the house from my office, where my router is located. After buying new antennae for the D-Link and building a shelf to relocate the router from the far corner of the house to a wall in the office that is closer to the center of the house, I still had issues and would end up switching to 3G or moving to get better WiFi signal. With the AEBS, I might still show a weaker signal like I did before, but I can still download via WiFi from the far end of the house at rates faster than 3G.