Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Wireless Router Recommendation

OK, I've finally gotten completely sick of having to physically restart my Linksys WPA54G (thanks for not including a restart button in the web interface, morons!), so I'm thinking about buying a new router.

I'm mainly looking at the Airport Extreme; we have one at work, it seems to hold up pretty well (had to restart it maybe once or twice in the last year). My hesitations:

• One less ethernet port than my current one (although I'm not sure if I actually use 4 ports or not)
• It doesn't have a web interface (not really a big deal)
• It doesn't have a bunch of twiddly things I could change (although I don't do that currently with my home network)
• It's kind of expensive, although I could add a USB hard drive to use as a NAS, which is appealing.
• I've heard iffy things about the NAS functionality, though.

Anyone have experience with these beasties (current model, pref) or other recommendations?

My network consists of a PowerMac G4, a homebuilt Core i7 gaming machine, a Macbook, a Macbook Pro, a TiVo, and Roku box. I don't do a lot of file transfer over the network, so it's mainly for internet access.

OK, you know I'm the Apple fanboy.

I use a Time Capsule, 2 Airport Extremes and an Airport Express in my house. I have a lot of 'stuff' that needs network connections like Apple TVs, Tivos, PS3, Wii, Slingbox, etc. And yes, the 4 port limitation is a PITA. You can get around that limitation if you keep your existing Linksys and use it only as a wired bridge to add more ports. (I do this.) You could also keep it as a Wifi router and use multiple BSSIDs (Wifi links) in your house in order to separate traffic. I use one Time Capsule at 5GHz to allow this the be the 'big' pipe in the house for fast transfers and Wifi backups. For all other traffic which doesn't need bandwidth, I use the Airport Extreme at 2.4 GHz. On the other side of the house, I needed several wired ports for a Tivo and Slingbox (a friend uses it to Sling TV in Switzerland). I use a 2nd Airport Extreme to connect to the first one and then provide 4 ports of ethernet in this other location. Works great and is easy to set up.

W/ the Airport stuff, the Airport Utility is really easy to use. Any Apple router just shows up and you can configure it on any PC or Mac. And yes, you can reboot any Apple router from this GUI.

I do use the Time Capsule for Time Machine backups on our 3 Macs. Works great. But the backups take up space, depending on how much history you keep. I repurposed a slightly used La Cie drive and hooked it up to one of the Airport Extremes and it's used as NAS that way. Works fine, I can easily stream videos (I've tried up to 2 GB files) from it to a Mac w/ no stuttering.

The newer Airport Extremes are nice because they are dual band. That means 1 router will do 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz simultaneously. Very cool feature and eliminates one box compared to my config. However, you still have the 4 port limitation.

The big Apple cons are cost, 4 ports, and the fact that the Time Capsule runs HOT. If you can get past that, great hardware. Maybe wait until after next Tues Apple announcement to see what's coming. Though I do think it's only iPod related.

Check CL in the Bay Area. 1 quick showed one for $75 in Campbell. Don't get the round one, you want any of the square ones.

Oh, I definitely want the newest one. I used to be an Apple tech, now I'm a Cisco/Windows/VMware/Apple/Linux/Storage/Networking tech.

Good to know that the NAS function works just fine. Do you store music files on it? I'd kind of like to dump the G4 in favor of some sort of networked storage, then sync the iPods off of the laptops.

I actually had to split the storage. My Time Capsule is pretty much my main iTunes repository. I have a Mac Mini that controls the music management. I used to manually sort my music by preference/genre. Then one day I accidentally had iTunes organize my iTunes library and I couldn't go back. Yeah, happens to a lot of people... I have iTunes store/organize all music on the Time Capsule. Then my wife uses her Macbook to sync her iPod and I use my Macbook to sync my iPhone 3G. To save HDD space on our Macbooks, we (and I mean me) point our iTunes library to the Time Capsule but don't copy them locally. Yeah, we have to be 'home' to sync but I rarely sync out of the house anyways. My iTunes library is relatively big, especially now since I've committed to Apple lossless and Time Machine eats into the Time Capsule's 1GB So only Time Machine and iTunes are on the Time Capsule. For all other stuff, like random files, digital pix, home vids, movies, etc, I put them on the LaCie on the other Airport Extreme.

Now I haven't tried this but you can connect a USB hub to the Extreme and then add multiple HDDs. So if you have a bunch lying around (like I do) they can all be made into NAS's. You can use the Airport Utility to control access to each of the drives.

And to make it more complicated I use Amazon's S3 and Jungledisk for off site storage. My previous LaCie died last year, taking many years of photos with it. It's beyond repair, unless I spend $$$. After that, I now use Jungledisk to save my photos and home vids to Amazon on a set cycle. For about 13GB, I pay about $4/mo. Great for piece of mind in case something happens at my house. I don't do it for my backups or my iTunes. I figure I can rerip if necessary and I'm too cheap to store backups. Granted it helps that my Comcast cable speed is 10Mbps upstream.

Yeah, hd problems would be why I wouldn't use a Time Capsule. I want mirrored storage for my stuff, unless it is just a backup. I figure a Buffalo DriveStation Duo would do the trick--we use them at our satellite sites as archive backups.

Sounds like your iTunes setup is exactly what I'm envisioning. I just don't use the G4 except to sync cameras and music, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense any more.

I also would prefer some kind of RAID/mirror solution. I lust after the Drobo, especially since my company does the CPU for that. Sadly, I can't work any kind of deal (I've tried). I've trolled ebay and CL many times w/ no luck.

The HP Media Vault and MediaSmart ones are nice as well, cheaper than Drobo. Don't even consider the Netgear NAS enclosure, that one is HORRIBLE, regardless of how cheap one can find it.

Really? The ReadyNAS? I just bought one for my office for storing out of service VMs on. It seems fairly decent.

The Drobo looks awesome, but is godawful expensive.

No the SC101 and SC101T are the bad ones. They increased ethernet performance w/ some s/w 'tricks' that only work on Windows.

Oh, and welcome to Ken and Cesar's email thread.

what do you think about Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ or Duo. They have some rebates going on too.

--Avi

Oh heck, I wouldn't touch anything Netgear developed in house. You kidding, man? Same with D-Link.

I'm having fairly good luck with my ReadyNAS Duo at work; I did have to do the WD Greenpower trick with them in order to avoid a lot of problems, so I'd recommend getting hard drives off of the ReadyNAS compatibility list. I also installed 1GB of RAM into it instead of the stock 256, which helped with UI responsiveness (nad possibly overall performance. So far (2-3 weeks or so) it's been quite solid.

Now, I'm only using it for NFS shares, so your experience may vary. The web interface is kind of clunky, and does tend to be pretty slow. YMMV, LBB, INAL, OMGWTFBBQ.

Ken, sorry to glob on to your thread a bit, but since the Drobo came up: Does anyone have any idea why there are so many bad reviews out there? Is it simply competition writing masked reviews or is the Drobo as unreliable as some of the reviews say?

I'm tired of resetting my linksys wrt54g router all the time as well. maybe I should get a new router as well..

Interesting. I used to have a WRT54GC and I did have to reset it about once a month. Didn't realize it was a widespread issue.

Well, mine could actually be the DSL modem as well. Can one just purchase one of those off the shelf and reasonably expect it to work? Or do I need to enter AT&T phone tree hell?

Nah, you can use any DSL modem. PM me if you're interested in my old Speedstream. I moved to Comcast Triple Play so I don't use it anymore. You can have it for free.

Hard to go back to 3 Mbps after having 20 Mbps downstream now...

My Belkin N+ works great so far, as CNet promised. Range is not exactly what I hoped, but generally trouble free and ez to work with and secure. Plays nice with 3 laptops, PS3, and my workhorse at the same time. I don't use the network memory function since it allows uninterrupted flow of music and photos from my desktop to the PS3 on opposite ends of the house, but it has the option if you want it.

Belkin, Linksys (Cisco), Netgear and Dlink all have similar, new 11n routers.

Just grabbed a modem off of freecycle, so I'll see if that helps. Maybe update the firmware on the Linksys, too.

I still want a new router, though.

Yeah, I doubt you'll find an 11n router on freecycle... Though you never know...

Nah, I'm willing to drop $170 on a new router, just not $50 on a new DSL modem. I mean, mine's only 10 years old. It should still work just fine, right?

OK Ken. You can now get your Drobo at a discount.

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/04/tuaws-review-of-the-drobopro-plus-a-discount-deal-for-readers/

Gee, that's all, huh?