Airport Extreme or ... ?

[Rhodan]

I'm looking to buy an Airport Extreme, but then saw some new models from Linksys (WRT350N) and Netgear (WRT350N). They have similar specs to the Airport (Gigabit switch, Wifi N etc.)

Can anyone recommend one over the other ? Does the Airport have as many settings and features as the Linksys / Netgear with regards to Firewall / Port Forwarding etc. ?

Thanks in advance !

 

[MacNut]

I think it comes down to how much do you want to spend.

 

[NAG]

The Airport Extreme has a good feature set (all the standard stuff like port forwarding, blah blah blah as well as printer and hard drive sharing). They're also very easy to setup, unlike other routers. Basically if you're in the market for a high end router then I'd look into one.

 

[MacNut]

It also depends on how experienced you are in setting up a router. They all will work fine. The Linksys is web based setup,

 

[NAG]

Yeah, I actually used to use Linksys routers before I switched to an Airport Extreme. Linksys is selling consumer routers under the Cisco brand now, right? Oh, and one draw back of the Airport is that it has to restart after every change you make (if you change a port got to restart it).

Anyway, Linksys should be fine.

 

[Rhodan]

I have loads of experience setting up Netgear / Linksys routers, but I've never owned an Airport, hence my questions.

Price isn't much of an issue really, I'm after solid performance, stability and a good feature set.

Thoughts ?

 

[MacNut]

Yeah, I actually used to use Linksys routers before I switched to an Airport Extreme. Linksys is selling consumer routers under the Cisco brand now, right?

Anyway, Linksys should be fine.

I believe they got rid of the Linksys name.

All 3 are fine. Airports are more expensive I believe.

 

[NAG]

The only advantage the Airport has other than ease of setup is that it is more likely to be compatible with anything Apple puts out (such as back to my mac dotmac feature). I wouldn't have considered an Airport basestation before this generation except they dropped the price to a somewhat reasonable level.

 

[Rhodan]

Oh, and one draw back of the Airport is that it has to restart after every change you make (if you change a port got to restart it).

OK that is seriously annoying !

Here in New Zealand, the Airport is cheaper than the others.

 

[NAG]

It restarts automatically for you so you don't have to be physically near it but yeah you have to wait about 15 seconds for the sucker to reboot every time you change a setting.

 

[vtecyo]

OK that is seriously annoying !

Here in New Zealand, the Airport is cheaper than the others.

ditto

 

[trule]

I have loads of experience setting up Netgear / Linksys routers, but I've never owned an Airport, hence my questions.

Price isn't much of an issue really, I'm after solid performance, stability and a good feature set.

Thoughts ?

I was originally thinking of getting an Airport for the USB attached hard disk, however there are more and more NAS solutions which can be connected to a faster Gbe interface...so the Netgear solution, which is 30% cheaper than the Apple product in my part of the world, starts to make more sense.

Some reviews suggested that the Airport was faster then the competition, but as always its how it performs in the real world that matters...and I imagine that any extra speed would not make too much real world difference.