Still buy an Airport Extreme ... ?

[nostra23]

Hi there,

my service provider switched my inet connection to 120Mbits (Yes this is true, its Germany and its cheap too!).

So as I am really happy with that I am now facing the problem that my normal wireless is not fast enough. Additional to that I got a Mac Mini here (latest generation with HDMI) which is my projector connected to, some fancy Iphones and a Ipad 2 to come as soon as it is released.

What I am looking for is a great solution for
a) now getting good wireless performance (100 mbits or more?), gigabit ports and some way to share my 1 TB hard disk with usb 2.0 with a reasonable speed
b) in future - watching content of the hard disk on all devices, either on the projector with mac mini, ipad or iphone - eventually use the ipad 2 as remote for all that stuff - so in general a apple multimedia solution (any more info on that somewhere?)

So I was looking at the AirPort Extreme. Wireless performance seems okay but not great (10 MBits/ 80Mbits), it is fancy in connecting all Mac devices and its Apple
So what I found kind of disturbing is that the hardware is actually 3-4 years old (or am I wrong?).

I was also looking at other fancy routers:
TP-Link TL-WR1043ND
Netgear WNDR3700-100PES
Asus RT-N56U (looks fancy )

Any recommendations are very welcome..

 

[miles01110]

my service provider switched my inet connection to 120Mbits (Yes this is true, its Germany and its cheap too!).

That's great. What's the actual speed?

a) now getting good wireless performance (100 mbits or more?), gigabit ports and some way to share my 1 TB hard disk with usb 2.0 with a reasonable speed

Not going to happen in any practical situation. Your USB drive is going to be the bottleneck... if you have the proper wiring throughout your residence.

So I was looking at the AirPort Extreme...I was also looking at other fancy routers:
TP-Link TL-WR1043ND
Netgear WNDR3700-100PES
Asus RT-N56U (looks fancy )

They all use the same wireless standard (802.11), so speeds are going to be comparable.

 

[nostra23]

That's great. What's the actual speed?

Hitting the 100 Mbits from time to time - in Usenet I get something around 80 Mbit/s constant - as you may suggesting, depends on the other side

Not going to happen in any practical situation. Your USB drive is going to be the bottleneck... if you have the proper wiring throughout your residence.

makes sense.. i should have a look at a cheap NAS and Gigabit wire it.

They all use the same wireless standard (802.11), so speeds are going to be comparable.

Well thats not true. The standard, which is 802.11n btw, should support up to 300 Mbit/s. All those devices have different throughputs because nobody is at the moment able to really get that 300 mbits

 

[balamw]

Well thats not true. The standard, which is 802.11n btw, should support up to 300 Mbit/s.

Read:

http://compnetworking.about.com/od/wireless/f/80211n-300-mbps.htm

most routers don't operate in the mode that can get you 300 Mbps because of the power and interference considerations. Unless you live in an anechoic chamber, set your sights on less than half that.

FWIW It's always better to wire your NAS, because otherwise your wireless bandwidth is consumed by both the link from the NAS and the client. And don't forget that cheap NAS tend to perform like cheap NAS.

B

 

[miles01110]

Well thats not true.

What isn't true about it? 802.11 routers, whether they're a/b/g/n, will all get comparable speeds to similar routers (i.e. an 802.11n router is comparable to any other 802.11n router).

 

[nostra23]

So what I found kind of disturbing is that the hardware is actually 3-4 years old (or am I wrong?).
.

Could somebody comment on that?

 

[petvas]

I also live in Germany and have 100Mbps cable (from KabelBW). I normally download from Usenet with 11-12,5M/sec..
I use a D-Link Dir 855 WLan Router, but I decided to get the Airport Extreme (already on its way to me). The reason for this change is that sometimes the DLink suffered from stability issues. On the other hand the Airport Extreme is one of the few devices with IPv6 support and I wanted to experiment with that...

 

[lexvo]

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I have my NAS connected with a cable to my Airport Extreme. I usually get speeds around 60-70Mbit/s. Incidentally, I've got a speed of 83Mbit/s.

By the way, you will never get 300Mbit/s in practice. You will get 150Mbit/s max (something to do with data going both ways) and then you will loose more because of overhead (error correction etc. ).

 

[balamw]

Could somebody comment on that?

The current models were released on October 20, 2009 which makes them less than 18 months old.

I have my NAS connected with a cable to my Airport Extreme. I usually get speeds around 60-70Mbit/s.

That's good performance, which NAS?

B

 

[lexvo]

That's good performance, which NAS?

B

I have a QNAP TS-119P+

 

[08380728]

I was also looking at other fancy routers:
TP-Link TL-WR1043ND
Netgear WNDR3700-100PES
Asus RT-N56U (looks fancy )

How about the FRITZ!Box 7390? This is a German Product!!!!

http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/index.html

 

[nostra23]

How about the FRITZ!Box 7390? This is a German Product!!!!

http://www.avm.de/en/Produkte/FRITZBox/index.html

nahhh.. first of all i dont want to use any phone features and second the 7390 is about/more than 200 euros (and the only one with gbit ethernet afaik)

 

[nostra23]

If anybody is interested how the story ended:

This Saturday I went into the apple store and bought an Airport Extreme. I am a very happy bunny now!

Wireless is good.. around 70-90 Mbits which is okay.
USB Performance is awesome. Got a cheap USB 2.0 1 TB drive on it and I can copy my stuff with 20 MB/s .. so around 150-160Mbits (via cable). That's really awesome and more than i expected. I copy my 6 GB movie stuff in minutes..

Also HD movie streaming is no issue.. if you calculate with 8 GB per mkv movie and 100 minutes - that are 80 MB per minute.. around 1,5-2 MB per second -> no problem. Tried to stream that to different Mac Mini/Mac Books - worked like a charm...

Apart from that it would be great if you can adjust something like QoS, configure VPNs etc. but hey - it as an awesome product!

Thanks for your support here.

 

[linux2mac]

I am very pleased with my Airport Extreme. It replaced my Linksys and I don't miss it one bit.

 

[Signal-11]

I am very pleased with my Airport Extreme. It replaced my Linksys and I don't miss it one bit.

I do.

Airport Extremes are just about the least capable and configurable $180 routers that money can buy.

I'd start with QoS on the list of basic things the Extreme should be able to do for the amount of money Apple charges for it.