Upgrade Old Airport Extreme?

[warehouse40]

I have an older Airport Extreme, 2009, and I want to extend my wifi network to another part of my house. I'm ready to run the ethernet cable but I'm not sure what I would be better off doing.

I was planning on getting an Airport Express and putting that downstairs (the Extreme is upstairs near my office). But would I be better off buying the new Extreme and using the old one to extend the network?

I do have a 2013 Macbook Air, but that would be the only device taking advantage of the new wifi ac.

 

[1BadMac]

I'm in a similar situation. I have a 2009 (Gen 3) Time Capsule and I backup over wifi to it and access my iTunes media on that as well. I have a 2013 Macbook Air. I can get between 100 - 300Mbps depending on where I am in the house. Since my internet speed only tops around 30Mbps, the only thing that might benefit would be my backups.

I "want" the new Time Capsule to take advantage of 801.11ac. But I'm not sure I "need" it or will see any real world speed increase. My backups occur in off hours as well, so I never am inconvenienced by the backups anyways.

There is also presently a software issue / limitation with ac on the new 2013's. Look at Anandtech's extensive review of the 2013 Air. Likely to be fixed "soon" - but it's limited the actual throughput when in OS X.