....But the short answer is yes, you’ll be much more likely to get full or near full speeds with a properly sized mesh system...
...It’s common to peak at ~half the rated speed in practice. Any good modern mesh system should be capable of 200Mbps+ within reasonable range, however.
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. Looking through all the replies, the three that have caught my eye are the:
1) Synology RT2600ac (which I mentioned earlier) because I saw Satcomer mention that here for the Time Machine and in a
diff thread for the VPN server:
I would get the best Ac router that has Time Machine Server software inside it the Synology RT2600ac. Then if you want mesh with that router get the Synology MR2200ac!
Yes but you wold have to put the Extreme in ‘Bridged Mode’ to turn of NAT if it sits behind another router! Don’t worry it will still act a wireless device!
Also consider the
Synology RT2600ac. Yes it can act as Time Machine as well as a VPN server!
See this video on it:
But this one is the priciest. Amazon's got it for $235, but I see it for $199 at B&H Photo and other vendors. I'm not sure how worth it having Time machine over the network + a possible VPN server setup is for that. At least the mesh add on MR2200ac is at $139.99.
2: The Velop Tri-Band which Fishrrman mentioned:
I'd consider mesh anyway.
Perhaps a 2-node system with 3 bands (2 regular wifi bands + a 3rd radio band to handle "the backhaul").
Look at the Linksys Velop and Netscape Orbi (there are others).
The 3rd band keeps it very fast by keeping the "regular" 2 bands free for actual traffic.
You could put the Airport into bridge mode to keep using the hard drive with it.
.....
Send it back and try the Velop.
There's a reason that Apple is selling these in the Apple Stores...
... The Linksys Velop system you posted above in reply 16 is a TWO band system.
It will work well enough, but the best performance is with the THREE band system they also offer.
The "extra radio band" is used exclusively for backhaul -- this is done so that won't impact bandwith on the "regular" wifi bands...
This one's $150 on Amazon which is great. No savings to get a 2 pack, that's $150 more making it $300. But a 3-pack is only $30 more at $330 so that's something to consider.
3. The Orbi was mentioned by Fishrrman above and also by pwjone1
....Normally upgrading home networks is not a bad idea, I saw a pretty significant improvement when I put in Netgear Orbi Mesh, but that had more to do with reach problems, and the ability to split A and B some, have it sort it all out.
(btw What did you mean by "but that had more to do with reach problems, and the ability to split A and B some, have it sort it all out.")
This one's confusing because it looks like there's two models, one that does 2.2Gbps and the other that does 3Gbps, and then comes in a 2pack or 3 pack for $200-$300. I'm not even sure what do here. Also the OP's bad experience with Netgear customer service over the nighthawk is making me hesitant here.
Right now I'm leaning towards the Velop tri-band but wanted to share in case anyone had any other thoughts.
Again, with Velop (or maybe Orbi), it looks like I'd be foregoing the ability to easily back up our computers to the network as we have been doing with the Airport Extreme. But looks like there's another way to do it here which may be better?:
I guess one further thing I would do is split out the NAS (Network Attached Storage) function from the Networking (particularly WiFi) box. The Apple approach of doing both in the same box is nice enough, one and done, but over time, you may want to upgrade one and not the other, and having them split out helps make it cheaper in the long run. The NAS box can also connected via Ethernet (be sure to use a fast switch or router, something 1GbPS or above, that will be fast enough for most hard drives), which if the boxes accessing it are Ethernet connected, saves you some WiFi bandwidth. That could be a Mac, for say Time Machine backups at night, but most do not bother with the dongles, WiFi is usually fast enough, and it goes on when everyone is (theoretically) in bed, but if you have any iMacs or PC desktops or servers, they will run fine. What I have had pretty good luck with, NAS box wise, is QNAP and Synology, granted those are not cheap, but you kind of get what you pay for, and they are capable of a lot beyond just the base NAS function.
I have a gigabit switch so looks like I'd have to get some equipment and I could keep doing what I was doing with the other router.
Also, I also saw Eero mentioned a few times:
.....FWIW (and probably more than you want to spend), Eero is a great mesh router. It has the bonus of working with Apple’s HomeKit Secure Router program, meaning any smart home devices you might have can be firewalled from IOT attacks.
I would personally buy a Nest or Eero mesh system. These are the Apple-like systems of 2020. The marginal cost of buying a good mesh system over a mediocre standard router/ap is $100-150. A few posts up you were willing to sign up for an extra $20/month charge to upgrade internet service speed that would have made no difference to you at all. Spend the money on a good, modern mesh system instead.
I retired my working AirPort Extreme replacing it with a Linksys EA9500. Then replacing that with 8 eero Pro’s throughout my plaster-and-lath-WiFi-killing walls.
But after seeing SalisburySam's response in the
other thread about the bad experience he seem to be having with them, that ruled that out for me:
My eeroPros are not working as well as I had hoped. WiFi speeds are pretty abysmal, hovering below 30Mpbs on my 300Mbps ISP speeds, both upload and downloads. I’m working with eero to determine why, and they’ve even suggested removing some of the eeroPros to reduce backhaul. For me, TimeMachine isn’t an issue as my backup device is an 8TB hard drive directly connected to my iMac. I do keep copies of important files encrypted in the cloud should my iMac and backup drive both fail. I’ve not used TimeMachine over WiFi so cannot comment. My net takeaway from all this is that (1) networking is not my forte, (2) eero mesh networks may work amazingly well for some but has not for me, (3) my home is a WiFi destroyer of the highest order, and (4) I’ll probably have to run CAT6 Ethernet to several of the eeroPros or range extenders if I revert back to the Linksys EA9500 and dump the eero’s. Haven’t made that decision yet.
(Also re the comment of Eero having the homekit, it looks like Linksys Velop is getting that soon too according to the amazon description:
https://www.amazon.com/Linksys-Tri-band-Intelligent-Maximize-devices/dp/B01N2NLRSD?th=1 ). Thanks for pointing that out because I do have a few things on the network I control with my iphone's home app (Nest AC, some bedroom lights)
Lastly, a comment about just keeping the Airport Extreme going:
I have 4 Apple Airport Extremes (the 802.11ac versions) all in bridge mode connected by gigabit ethernet backhaul. Covers over 5000 sqr ft over 3 levels and can get 250Mbit/sec over WiFi without problem...
...
I ideally would love to keep my Airport Extreme going and add more to bridge them and spread the wifi signal around. A big thing about it I like is the ability to use the Airport Utility. But that seems like a waste to have gigabit internet coming into the house and then only getting 250Mb/sec. My cousin's got AT&T gigabit internet and wireless he's doing around 500Mbps with Ookla's speed test (But he's gotta be close, in his room off the extender he's doing 30Mbps)
What I'll look into is when I have the new router, see what speeds I'm getting and try to max that out and in the meantime, get the Airport Extreme fixed for the overheating if possible and then reconnect and see if I'm getting close. If so, I'll just return the new router.
.....
Anyway, my recollection is that Apple got to 802.11ac before they pulled out of the market, but which variation I cannot at this point remember. Older variants had earlier standards. An 802.11n running 1x1@40 would top out at 150MbPS, so that would probably translate to the 135MbPS being seen, real-world.
Anyway, that also leads to why I was suggesting Wi-Fi 6 (or 6E), not quite yet to a good price point, hence the suggestion to wait a bit.....
...But right now we are in the middle of a transition to WiFi 6, new bandwidth ranges just got approved in the USA, so it might make sense to wait until that sorts out some (and the prices become reasonable), which will probably take until the end of the year. When going external, particularly for things like Zoom, the ISPs speed into the house, and the session count in the ISP router, start to limit you as much or more as the networking WiFi gear. You could upgrade your networking to only find out that you need more bandwidth from the ISP (and some cable ISPs are really kind of notorious for over-committing their networks, so with everyone working from home, something they probably never planned for, they are struggling). And I would also point out that Apple has been somewhat slow to get WiFi 6 support out in its Mac lineup, I have a Lenovo P1 Gen2 (Windows PC) bought last year that has it, iPhones have it, but not so far MacBooks. There is a good write-up on it at:
Wi-Fi 6 OVERVIEW
Still, you want to plan for the future, and WiFi 6 is the future, it is meant to solve a lot of the problems of high device density setups. So if you buy something else now, realize that it may need replacing again in a year or so.
With my Airport Extreme overheating, I may as deal with it now. I’m also curious to figure out what the max speeds In the off chance Wifi 6 routers get released soon and is affordable, I can sell whatever I buy.
And last Q:
...Both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks share the same name and I haven‘t found any of my devices that have issues with that.
....
What does this mean? Something I did recently after noticing the speed issues was give the 5gz network a name and just connect to that. In my master bedroom I've done speedtests on both the 5ghz one and (I assume) non 5ghz one and it's a pretty big difference (see attachments).
