Best wifi router going forward.....

I exceeded 5000 words.. sorry.. here is the rest.

So to answer the question do you need a new wireless router the answer is likely yes.. but it is not as a replacement to the TC but rather to get wireless signal into those dark areas of the house.

There are two ways to do that now.

Wired ethernet which gives fast backhaul between access points.

OR

Mesh wireless products. They all use wireless backhaul of some sort. Better ones like Netgear Orbi use a separate wifi signal purely for backhaul and it is faster than any local connection to keep the network speed up.

Wired is superior in every way but expensive to install. Mesh is proprietary. So you buy a kit of router plus satellite and add more satellites if required. You must stick to same product from same brand.

Apple dropped out of the router market still using the much older and poorer extend wireless concept. It did work fine when you used ethernet backhaul.. but wireless was a major slow down. Particularly the Express which was promoted for that job since it is a toy router.

what would be the best option out there...maybe Wifi 6 wouldn't make sense at this point

Best is always hard to find.. and involves accurate knowledge of every factor that controls your decisions.

To get much better wifi network in your house.. the answer is distributed wifi. Not one super router to rule them all.

If you can get ethernet installed.. think of it as a 25year investment.. unlike computer /network products of 5-8 years; do it!!

You can then buy a whole range of well priced mesh products that will adapt to ethernet backhaul or proper APs.. even more airports for the short term as they will all be dead in a few years.

I like Asus and Synology routers.. Some TP-Link stuff is ok for cheaper low end install.

Ubiquiti is becoming popular for high end.

If you want Mesh.. look at the reviews.

Netgear Orbi RBK50 still tops most of the charts.

Asus have an AX product.. RT-AX92.

Still early days for AX and no improvements in speeds at the client until we get AX clients.. which will come out in the next few years. Bleeding edge technology is not where i live at this stage.. you might be younger and more wanting the latest greatest gadget.. hence best will involve blood loss.

that's called WiFi 5 now, right?

https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html

Sort of mostly but not quite. It is fairly difficult to get a clear view since wireless networking has always been built on the biggest numbers the marketing department could find and every manufacturer plays that game in a cold war type escalation until it all means next to nothing.

Marketing still = snake oil sales.

Even the Engineers completely bungled IMHO calling the wireless version AC which universally means Alternating Current.

so does that mean my home network is already running on the same speed that I'd get by replacing the TC with a newer WiFi 5 router? No point in getting a new router? Our TC is a few years old at least.

If your TC is the tall model that came out in 2013 it is indeed AC wireless and is capable of max link speeds of 1300Mbps.

Before you go into raptures about that wifi exceeding gigabit wired network, in real world it is 2-3x slower at BEST cf ethernet. It is half-duplex which means divide by 2 since wireless cannot tx and rx at the same time. Ethernet can. Which means, using marketing speak, gigabit is really 2000Mbps.

But wireless is shared. So total bandwidth is say 400Mbps Max and the more devices that share it the less efficient it becomes. So 10 devices sharing 400Mbps is not 40Mbps each (say all are trying to get access at the same time).. but a whole range of speeds with the Max throughput now 300Mbps due to inefficiency of collision environment. Ethernet can handle multiple clients at full speed, although max throughput is still gigabit on any one link.

Age is a factor.. as wireless routers age their wireless output drops.. This happens faster or slower depending on quality of components.. my Apple Time Capsule.. I have 2 at the moment and up to 4.. vary tremendously. That means range is going to drop off. And range on the TC was never up to the standard of some better brands.

The first thing to do in figuring out if it is time to replace wireless routers is put hard numbers to fuzzy grey world of invisible wifi.

What the actual speed is like at each point around the house. You can download wifi analyser software for most OS and it is built into Mac wireless diagnostics.. although that does not tell you link speeds.

Here is netspot.. free version.. not so pretty but has the details.

Now to interpret the chart.. the wireless output is used as chart key.. so highest signal first followed by each one that is discovered.

I have a large house which needs multiple Wireless Access Points.

The Asus RT-AC88U is my main router in the next room. It has signal level like most routers would have right next to the computer. Just to show what the Apple is like.. it is sitting near the Asus.. It's SSID is tc5e and you can see wireless signal is at least 10dbm less than the Asus.. not a problem in the same room.. big problem as you get further away.

To show the contrast I have a synology router at the other end of the house connected by ethernet back to the Asus. This covers that area of the house. From the point where I am measuring the Synology signal is -70db on 2.4ghz and -83db at 5ghz.. this is near to useless even on 2.4ghz. You need -60db min and really up near -40db to get high speed on 5ghz. You also see 5ghz suffers worse signal loss passing through walls and floor. This is expected.

Amazon has the Orbi RBK50 for $278

I wish I had access to your pricing.. Antipodean!!

The Orbi is far superior to the Google mesh which has no dedicated backhaul and will be a lot slower. Much more restricted firmware and controls.

Even in a small house the better the signal the better the speed, especially in the wifi warfare with the neighbours.

You can still use the TC for main router if it still is adequate for the job.. just turn off its wireless and put the router orbi into AP mode.

Or you can use the orbi router and use the TC plugged into the orbi with wifi off still and use it just for backup. The TC never lasted as well as the equivalent Extreme version though. The hard disk being a weak point as well as extra heat etc. Set a practical limit of 5 years.. and even 3 years running 24/7 is pretty much a limit of much consumer electronics.

The nice thing with Synology router (RT2600AC) is excellent support for Time Machine.. much like its bigger NAS cousins.

Both Synology and Asus standard router series do offer Mesh to extend the wifi as well as Time Machine to USB drives.. but dedicated mesh is always superior. ie Mesh boxes designed from the ground up to do meshy things.. are better than a wifi router where the manufacturer says.. "oh no we are losing sales to mesh products.. let's tack on mesh. Customers will never notice because they are basically dumb"

As a more general observation Time Machine is becoming a serious pain in later MacOS. Catalina worst of all.

With new computers needing a more reliable target for backups, I would also speed up plans to remove the TC.

Network backup for laptops is great.. since you don't want the hassle of plugging in a USB drive.

I would definitely change to Carbon Copy Cloner or similar clone backup. It will work a lot better with Catalina even if it is not quite as good at recovering files.

Does either one allow me to plug an external HD directly into it so I can Time Machine right to the HD?

1) Synology is better for Time Machine

Yes, the synology. Yes better for TM.

Netgear does have a USB port which to this point has no function at all. (Future use where the future never arrives).

I figure the Engineers ran into problems or Netgear cut short firmware development.. whatever it did not happen.

The Synology has USB 3 port and is about the same speed over the network as the Internal disk of the Time Capsule. And yes it works well for Time Machine.

2) Orbi is better wifi all around (but how much 'better'?)

Much better if you have issues getting wifi around your house.

It somewhat depends on location. For example in the case of a long range style house it can be difficult to get coverage over the whole place from end to end. A more compact place with central location and not too many walls can work well with just a single wireless point. If it is solid build with double brick walls and the router must be located at one end.. getting fast 5ghz wifi to the other end can be impossible.

That is one question you will need to suck and see.. (old engineers method.)

As a router the Synology is head and shoulders above the Orbi which is designed for simplistic setups and no ability users who want nothing complicated.

The synology has been on the market now a long time. Synology are a NAS company who decided to put a toe in the router waters.. I get the feeling they are not putting a lot of effort into AX replacement to the current units.