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Best Wireless Router

photogpab

photogpab

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
491
8
Moved into a house recently (used to be in an apartment) and my Airport Extreme isnt performing as well anymore. I have my office upstairs and i guess the signal is having a hard time traveling but i'm only getting about 5 to 6mbps download speeds. if i carry my iMac downstairs I get 25mbps +

any advice? is it my airport extreme? is there a newer better router that has better range? any advice is much appreciated.

bought my airport extreme a little over 2 years ago.
 
I only buy router with real external antenna. Upgraded my home router ASUS RT-AC66U with 3x 9dbi antenna. The coverage and speed is awesome.
The old router was a RT-N16 with DD-WRT.
 
The Netgear WNDR-3700 is pretty stable and reliable, has file/printer sharing, etc...picked it up on a special at Best Buy for $60
 
photogpab said:
Moved into a house recently (used to be in an apartment) and my Airport Extreme isnt performing as well anymore. I have my office upstairs and i guess the signal is having a hard time traveling but i'm only getting about 5 to 6mbps download speeds. if i carry my iMac downstairs I get 25mbps +

any advice? is it my airport extreme? is there a newer better router that has better range? any advice is much appreciated.

bought my airport extreme a little over 2 years ago.
Click to expand...

Add an airport express to the extreme to extend the coverage.
 
Two years isn't extremely old, but wireless routers do lose some "power" over time. Also, wireless signal is affected by a home's particular construction. You've got two variables in the equation.

Like others have said, you may need some equipment to extend the range. Hard to know if that's the answer of if a new router is in order...or both. If you decide to get a new router, you could try using your existing AE to extend the network if it seems necessary.
 
jwhite4304 said:
I second the addition of an airport express to give more coverage. I added one and the difference is very noticeable in previous dead areas or slow coverage.
Jimbo
Click to expand...

I second that. I have an extreme/express combo and it gives me full coverage.
 
BrianBaughn said:
Two years isn't extremely old, but wireless routers do lose some "power" over time. Also, wireless signal is affected by a home's particular construction. You've got two variables in the equation.

Like others have said, you may need some equipment to extend the range. Hard to know if that's the answer of if a new router is in order...or both. If you decide to get a new router, you could try using your existing AE to extend the network if it seems necessary.
Click to expand...

:confused:
Link to where they that is proven!
 
photogpab said:
is it my airport extreme?
Click to expand...
Possibly. Could also just be the construction and/or layout of your home. Whenever you're moving into a larger home you can't just assume that the same WiFi network will work equally as well as it did in the previous place.
 
looked up the airport express on apple.com and its $99?

i thought they were small devices that plugged into the wall and looked like charges and were about $60?
 
photogpab said:
looked up the airport express on apple.com and its $99?
Click to expand...

That's correct. The new one looks like this.

3SNGR2D.png


You can get a refurb from Apple for $85.

photogpab said:
i thought they were small devices that plugged into the wall and looked like charges and were about $60?
Click to expand...

You are thinking of the previous generation model. Looks like this.

fpih7sL.png


The previous gen. is still available as a refurb for $69. I prefer this (old) version for travel.
 
I am personally using an asus nt r56u router, which had a pretty impressive range.

Alternately, use home plugs to channel Ethernet to your study room?
 
As I am converting to Apple world, I wanted to switch from using my Netgear WNDR3700v2 (running netgear genie firmware) to AirPort Extreme, just so I could use one of my external HDDs for Time Machine backups as my Netgear does not support that; however, after going through two different AirPort Extreme routers I gave up and went back to using my 2 years old Netgear.

For some reasons, I could not get the 2.4 Ghz radio to work reliably. I could be right in the front of APE and my speeds wouldn't go above 8-10 mbps without chocking or timing out - tried manually switching channels, but nothing really helped. My Netgear on the other hand maxes out at 2.4 Ghz constantly delivering 32-34Mbps - huge difference.

The 5Ghz was also far from stellar, although the APE would usually give me 48-49 Mbps, my Netgear typically was in 54-55Mbps range outperforming APE by small margin.

I really like the simplicity of APE; however, I could not accept the fact that for close to $200 I was getting a very mediocre, almost non functioning device - very sad about it.

I will revisit the APE subject when the new models supporting AC standards show up, but at this point, I decided to spend $35 instead of close to $200 and got myself a twelve south backpack for my iMac and I do my Time Machine to my HDD directly attached to my iMac.
 
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