Buying a Refurb AirPort Extreme vs Orbi and Others

[smallcoffee]

Hi everyone,

Wanted to get some feedback on buying a new router. I have an Time Capsule that, I think is on its last legs. It's about 5 years old now, and I'm experiencing huge latency spikes that's disrupting my video conference calls (and it happens in games as well). Other household members experience the same thing. I'm pretty sure the router is the cause of the latency issue, but at least if I get a new one I can verify that for sure (and return if that's not the case).

I no longer need the Time Capsule functionality as I have iCloud backup that I pay for, so what do you think about buying a refurb/new in the box AirPort Extreme (last gen before discontinuing) versus another product like the NetGear Orbi or Nighthawk, or a different router?

We have a lot of connected devices, probably about a dozen.

Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

There's no point in buying an Apple Airport now, refurbished or otherwise.
They're "old tech".

Better to pick something new.
I like the "mesh systems", of which there are many out there.

I have a 3-band Velop system. It's run fine for some time now (I have two nodes).
The "third radio band" serves as a separate "backhaul" channel, so the other two bands are free from having to handle that task.

You could go Orbi, Velop, eero, etc.
Again, many out there.

Best thing to do is spend some time reading user reviews, etc. before you buy.

 

[smallcoffee]

There's no point in buying an Apple Airport now, refurbished or otherwise.
They're "old tech".

Better to pick something new.
I like the "mesh systems", of which there are many out there.

I have a 3-band Velop system. It's run fine for some time now (I have two nodes).
The "third radio band" serves as a separate "backhaul" channel, so the other two bands are free from having to handle that task.

You could go Orbi, Velop, eero, etc.
Again, many out there.

Best thing to do is spend some time reading user reviews, etc. before you buy.

thanks.

I’ve been reading reviews, but it’s good to get some presumably more human and less influenced feedback from a community like this. I can only trust Amazon reviews, Tom’s, etc so much

 

[Stephen.R]

I'd suggest that a lot will depend on your house, and how hands-on you are/want to be.

A "mesh" device is pointless if your house is small enough that a single wireless device can cover the whole thing.

Also consider that "mesh" devices work by sending data between each other wirelessly - if your house has for example, a lot of solid brick/concrete internal walls, you're going to see a lot of interference.



Personally, I see zero benefit from "mesh" devices. I'm adding ethernet to various rooms, and I'll put regular wired access points to each one. Obviously that isn't an option if you're not able/don't want to install ethernet. It also may not be necessary for you.

 

[mj_]

Personally, I see zero benefit in adding ethernet to your house. Unless you have a Gigabit fibre connection to the internet or run a professional-level managed network infrastructure of course.

I've switched to a Netgear Orbi whole-house Mesh system (RBK23) in July of 2019 and honestly, I couldn't be happier. At 1,700 sqft my house isn't particularly large (for US and Texas standards, that is) but it's elongated with the Wi-Fi router in my office at one end of the house and the Smart TV and living room at the other end. I had zero Wi-Fi reception in my backyard, close to zero in our master bedroom and very poor reception in the living room. For about two years I made do with a TP-Link Wi-Fi range extender plugged into the wall in the hallway halfway through the house, which worked acceptably well but needed to be restarted almost every day because its Wi-Fi transfer performance dropped from 50 Mbps to less than 10 after a while. Fortunately, its software included a night mode so I simply shut it off every night at 4am and powered it back up at 4:02am

Eventually, as my outside office space grew and in spent more time working outdoors in the shade I got sick of its poor performance and high latency and spent $200 on aforementioned RBK23. Totally worth it. Thanks to Orbi's separate 5 GHz backhaul channel I get a full 230 Mbps in my backyard with only a minor increase in latency. Whatever system you buy make sure it has a separate 5 GHz backhaul channel, and make sure you can daisy chain the towers.

 

[Stephen.R]

Personally, I see zero benefit in adding ethernet to your house.

As I said, it will depend entirely on your needs, and the circumstances.

Every wall in our house (internal, external, everything) is brick with concrete render on both sides. If you're not aware, concrete is like kryptonite to Wifi. I sometimes have zero Wifi signal upstairs in bed, essentially directly above the Wifi router downstairs (through a concrete floor).

The AppleTV in the lounge room (through one wall from the Wifi router) will often take minutes to load a high-quality movie from the Mac if connected over Wifi. It'll start streaming almost instantly on Ethernet.

Unless you have a Gigabit fibre connection to the internet

Not quite, 400 MBit symmetrical.

 

[RecentlyConverted]

Have you checked the air intake at the bottom? I have a few of my units wall mounted with a purpose built bracket. obviously I dusted the unit regularity, but it wasn’t unit I took the unit out of the bracket ( as I was going to paint) and I could see the air intake was clogged with dust. I am surprised the units had not overheated.

I used a vacuum cleaner to suck out the dust, I covered most of the holes with tape and connected the cleaner to the uncovered holes, moved the tape round and repeated until I had sucked the dust out of each hole. Do not blow as that will force the dust into the unit.

 

[mj_]

As I said, it will depend entirely on your needs, and the circumstances.

100% agreed. Concrete walls are the nemesis of wireless signals. Been there, done that. Back when my wife and I used to live in Germany our apartment walls were 100% reinforced armored ferroconcrete. Every. Single. One. Even though the entire apartment was only slightly over 800 sqft the WiFi signal had a very hard time penetrating from one end of the apartment to the other. Our current house, on the other hand, is standard Texas build quality: hollow on the inside, spacious on the outside, and build on a lot that borders on decadence and is way too large for a single family home

Not quite, 400 MBit symmetrical.

Lucky you. Where I live I get to choose between 4 Mbps AT&T or 200 Mbps Spectrum. No fibre, no nothing. Spectrum is fully aware of this situation and continues to charge a hefty premium in this neighborhood.

 

[Stephen.R]

Lucky you. Where I live I get to choose between 4 Mbps AT&T or 200 Mbps Spectrum. No fibre, no nothing. Spectrum is fully aware of this situation and continues to charge a hefty premium in this neighborhood.

until quite recently we only had ~30/5 MBit vdsl - they wouldn’t install fibre without poles. I’d previously buried the copper phone lines in a conduit after their contractors wanted to “just hang it on the (overgrown, barbed wire) fence”, but they wouldn’t accept using buried conduit for fibre and it had to be on poles (house is ~90m/100yards from the road).

The power company ended up needing to put poles through our block to connect a new transformer so we now have fibre and are no longer at the mercy of the scrotes who kept stealing the ~5m of copper wiring between the end of the conduit and the utility pole (seriously who the 🦆 steals copper wiring from someone’s house)

I don’t suppose you want to hear that it’s (Fibre) only $25/month do you? It’s actually cheaper than the vdsl was.

 

[troy14]

Dude! Get a Synology RT2600ac. It’s an awesome router and Synology router management software is amazzzzxxing. As an Apple user, you will definitely enjoy and appreciate the experience.

 

[Rizvi1]

Dude! Get a Synology RT2600ac. It’s an awesome router and Synology router management software is amazzzzxxing. As an Apple user, you will definitely enjoy and appreciate the experience.

This is what I ended up getting. I still haven't dived into all the stuff the RT2600ac can do but at the least, the new router is able to deliver the full 200Mbps speed I'm paying for wirelessly, something that my Apple Extreme stopped being able to do. I was leaning towards the Linksys Velop and the Orbi, but then came across this thread that sold me on the Synology.