Wireless Router

[cutestory]

What's the latest and greatest? I'm looking at the Asus RT-AC66U.

 

To make a long story short, I'm having some problems (not worth going into) with my current routers/APs and I'm looking to see if I can get a single unit that can cover the entire property...I'm throwing money at the problem now.

 

Is this a good way to go?

[HeadphoneAddict]

Personally I'd still get an Apple Airport Extreme, and then sprinkle the property with an Airport Express or two as network extenders if needed.  But I hear that Apple is about to support a new faster standard than 801.11n 5Ghz soon, and so that might mean a hardware update soon.  

 

We have been able to cover the whole 5,000 sq foot 3-level house with just one Airport Extreme router in the upstairs loft, but it got worse when we moved the router to the basement.  The speeds are a bit faster now at the far reaches of the house after adding an Airport Express as network extender, especially two floors away and at the other side of the house.  

[Dusty Chalk]

ac is definitely the best most recent technology in terms of speed, but I am not familiar with power, which is what you really want to increase area coverage. I don't think they make repeaters for that yet.

[Augsburger]

With Verizon Fios as the pipeline we use Airport Extreme/Airport Express combo for extended coverage throughout the house.  We also use the Netgear Powerline AV modules for high speed in the areas far from the AE and for more secure internet. We also use a Buffalo for WIFI service in the far corner of the yard where Daddy sits drinking wine and thinks ........

[Dreadhead]

I have a Netgear N600 router and I love it. It's coverage is easily 2x as large as my old router. That said I have a brick house so I still need a separate AP in the front of the house. To connect the AP I use a powerline wire system which I find works way better than using a repeater.

[cutestory]

Grabbed an Airport Extreme and an Airport Express. Bam! Problem solved.

[morphsci]

Reviving this thread. So my AirPort Extreme is starting to act a bit flaky and will need to be replaced. I have been happy with it and could simply replace it with the updated model. A refurb goes for $129 so not too expensive. I know a few people recently updated so if there is a reason to go another route please let me know.

[grawk]

the new airport is pretty great.  

[Pars]

the older one isn't?

[grawk]

I had issues with the prior gen one.  Would reboot at weird times under heavy use.

[Pars]

Mine might even be the prior gen.; refurb from Apple store. No issues in 2 years?

[Absorbine_Sr]

I've had very good coverage and speed with the Netgear Nighthawk. This is for a refurb model on Amazon.

 

Edit: adding a link for the NIB version as I saw a few reviews of the refurb that said there were issues with serial number and warranty.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Absorbine_Sr

[Grahame]

+1 on the R7000. Slickdeals is showing ways to get the price down at staples https://slickdeals.net/f/7762199-netgear-nighthawk-r7000-140-ac-ar-staples?v=1

[shellylh]

I would just go with the Airport Extreme.  

[Grand Enigma]

^ agreed, I have not had to reboot mine for 3+ years now. Obviously, mine is not the most current generation.

[VPI]

I have the new and old extremes running in my house and I have done nothing but set them up and forget them.  Never thought about them since day one.

[Aura]

Airports aren't finicky with non-Apple stuff, right? It's about time for us to get some AC action as well.

[Salt Peanuts]

Airports aren't finicky with non-Apple stuff, right? It's about time for us to get some AC action as well.

I've had no issues with mine connecting to Windows, Android, etc. FWIW, Airport Utility for Windows have not been updated for almost 3 years and there may be some features that you can't access unless you have OS X/iOS hardware.

[Aimless1]

My Airport Extreme is about 3 yrs old too.  Connect all apple products and MS and Android.+ whatever system the Marantz receiver and Toshiba tv use.  Haven't done a thing to the extreme and still going strong.

[luvdunhill]

I have the new giant one and the new smaller one. For my next AP I won't be able to use Apple as I need an always on VPN, which I don't believe I can do. So I will probably do something DIY as I would also like my router to failover to LTE in case my (wired) internet goes down. I have done some research on DIY if anyone cares, the new Rangeley processors are nice for this application.

[cetoole]

Why not ubiquiti edge router lite to handle all routing and fail between two WAN connections, and whatever AP you want? Unless you want to diy.

[luvdunhill]

Well, Intel versus Cavium and Brocade (whatever the open source version is called) versus pfSense? Also, DIY could have antenna and also the LTE card slot in a single chassis. With the ERL I need two more boxes and a LTE to Ethernet thinger seems harder to find. But yeah, I like the ERL.

[manaox2]

I have 3 different pieces of hardware that do my routing all running pfSense. I use the ASUS AC68u as my access point which has some interesting features you can unlock in the firmware for power output and channels. This gives me an always on VPN and management rules, network anti virus, threat analysis through squid if wanted, and some other nice packages.

 

My 1st setup is an old IBM Pentium 4 think-center with an extra intel network card. It's not very power efficient, but has at least 600 Mbps throughput and cost next to nothing for the hardware.

 

My second setup I put together to replace the IBM and ended up using at work for a bit, I have an APU1D4 headless router box that runs at 24W and has about 500-600Mbps throughput as well using a dual core 1ghz bobcat core and 4gb ddr3 ram. Small, cost me about $216 from http://www.pcengines.ch/for all the hardware. If you don't need the customization options, it performs about on par with the ubiquity edgerouter lite (for half the cost, the edgerouter lite is the better choice, but I've been burned by ubiquity on network adapters and support before).

 

My main machine router for the 1Gbps throughput and 25W power efficiency is the SuperMicro SuperServer SYS-5018A-FTN4. It has an Intel Atom C2758 (rangeley as Mark mentioned) with 8 cores at 2.4Ghz and Intel quickassist. Quickassist is interesting because its an algorithm accelerator that will soon be supported in pfSense so that an encrypted connection will be much lighter on the CPU. Should max out the 1Gb ethernet ports at 1.488M PPS. I plan to host my own VPN and Plex remote server one day hopefully. I currently only have 8 GB of ECC RAM installed and an SSD running Hyper-V for managing different network apps. Costs about $650 in all, cheapest place is at http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=SY-518AFN4

Edited April 12, 2015 by manaox2

[luvdunhill]

I am probably going with this, with fewer cores:

http://store.netgate.com/mobile/ProductDescription.aspx?ProductId=2196

Similar and better form factor.

Edited April 12, 2015 by luvdunhill

[manaox2]

I am probably going with this, with fewer cores:

http://store.netgate.com/mobile/ProductDescription.aspx?ProductId=2196

Similar and better form factor.

That looks very nice. Netgate is awesome, would have liked to pay for their support and supporting pfsense. I believe they are the driving support behind quickassist drivers being ported to freebsd and are working with Intel.

This is the netgate supported version that you described: https://store.pfsense.org/SG4860/

Edited April 12, 2015 by manaox2