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Any chance of an update to Airport Extreme?

Dukeylosta

Dukeylosta

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 23, 2015
4
2
The Airport Extreme is an odd Apple product, but a useful one, and it hasn't been updated in a couple of years. I'm ready for a new router and as a great example of the Ordinary User of Technology, I really like the idea of the Airport's ease of setup and use. But I would like some of the upgraded features like additional ports and USB 3, for heaven's sake.

Has anyone heard anything about an upgrade? Am I the only one who is a little nervous about going to a NetGear or whatever that has all those ridiculous-looking spiky antennae sticking out?
 
Dukeylosta said:
But I would like some of the upgraded features like additional ports and USB 3, for heaven's sake.

Has anyone heard anything about an upgrade? Am I the only one who is a little nervous about going to a NetGear or whatever that has all those ridiculous-looking spiky antennae sticking out?
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USB 3.0 on a router is usually a gimmick and I would not count on Apple for more than three Ethernet ports. That being said, I could see it being feasible that Apple could drop a minor performance update.
 
Thanks, Altemose. USB 3.0 SOUNDS like it would be better. This is the level of technical sophistication I have -- and why I tend to trust Apple as a consumer. Now that I'm getting products that have ac, it's making more sense to upgrade my very old (like 6-7 years) Airport Express. However, the thing I hate the most is buying an Apple product and finding out a month later that they're updating it. I can usually keep up with that sort of thing on sites like this, but with the Airport Extreme, we're all pretty much in the dark...
 
Dukeylosta said:
Thanks, Altemose. USB 3.0 SOUNDS like it would be better. This is the level of technical sophistication I have -- and why I tend to trust Apple as a consumer. Now that I'm getting products that have ac, it's making more sense to upgrade my very old (like 6-7 years) Airport Express. However, the thing I hate the most is buying an Apple product and finding out a month later that they're updating it. I can usually keep up with that sort of thing on sites like this, but with the Airport Extreme, we're all pretty much in the dark...
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The issue is that the chipsets in most routers can not even handle a saturated USB 2.0 bus, let alone even reach the speeds of USB 3.0. Granted, there are exceptions and lately some of the top router manufacturers have been pushing some impressive USB speeds in routers. If you are looking for the best benchmarks, then Apple is going to fall short. However, if you want a router that gives you fantastic reliability, simplicity, and speed then the Extreme won't disappoint. Plus, you can get them for $129 from Apple Refurbished and they have official Time Machine support.
 
I jumped ship to a Asus RT-AC87U last year. Unreliable, Asus support is trying, but Quantenna's drivers for the 5Ghz suck. I'm hoping that with new hardware that supports MIMO, that may mean that the router will be updated too. I would definitely go Apple.
 
Altemose said:
The issue is that the chipsets in most routers can not even handle a saturated USB 2.0 bus, let alone even reach the speeds of USB 3.0. Granted, there are exceptions and lately some of the top router manufacturers have been pushing some impressive USB speeds in routers. If you are looking for the best benchmarks, then Apple is going to fall short. However, if you want a router that gives you fantastic reliability, simplicity, and speed then the Extreme won't disappoint. Plus, you can get them for $129 from Apple Refurbished and they have official Time Machine support.
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The AirPort Extreme has been able to saturate USB 2.0 for at least two generations now.
 
Altemose said:
USB 2.0 is capable of 60 MB/s (Megabytes per second). The highest benchmark I have ever seen on an Extreme was around 25-30 MB/s.
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What about the gigabit ethernet ports? They should be able to push ~ 120MB/s right?
 
Altemose said:
The Ethernet ports are full Gigabit speed.
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I guess you missed my point, if you plug a hard drive into the usb 2.0 ports on an airport extreme you are limited by the usb 2.0 speed when connected with a ethernet cable. It would make sense to upgrade the extreme with usb 3.0.
 
Extreme is not a NAS intended for rapid access to drives. For a drive used for Time Machine backups, USB 2 is just fine. If we are going to upgrade a new version of Extreme....put in USB 3.1 ports using USB-C connections. :)
 
jermy4 said:
I guess you missed my point, if you plug a hard drive into the usb 2.0 ports on an airport extreme you are limited by the usb 2.0 speed when connected with a ethernet cable. It would make sense to upgrade the extreme with usb 3.0.
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I understood your point but what I was saying is that the Extreme is already pushing nearly the real world limit of USB 2.0 as stated by @Mr. Wonderful. If you read reviews and tests on routers with USB 3.0, very few actually surpass the Extreme in USB drive performance. The Extreme's USB 2.0 chipset gets the job done and those who need higher performance should be shopping for a NAS rather than a router with a USB port.
 
Altemose said:
I understood your point but what I was saying is that the Extreme is already pushing nearly the real world limit of USB 2.0 as stated by @Mr. Wonderful. If you read reviews and tests on routers with USB 3.0, very few actually surpass the Extreme in USB drive performance. The Extreme's USB 2.0 chipset gets the job done and those who need higher performance should be shopping for a NAS rather than a router with a USB port.
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So I do actually own an extreme and have considered adding a usb drive to it for time machine but I wonder if it would be quite a bit slower than using a time capsule since it is only usb 2.0. Has anyone compared the performance of an extreme with an external drive vs a time capsule?
 
jermy4 said:
So I do actually own an extreme and have considered adding a usb drive to it for time machine but I wonder if it would be quite a bit slower than using a time capsule since it is only usb 2.0. Has anyone compared the performance of an extreme with an external drive vs a time capsule?
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You are looking at 20-25 MB/s using the USB port on the Extreme. The speeds are perfectly ample for basic NAS and backup purposes.
 
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