Apple Airport Extreme vs. other routers?

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Level 1

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Apple Airport Extreme vs. other routers?

What are the key differences between the current Apple Airport Extreme base station and other brand-name routers, particularly for streaming video? Does the Apple meet "N+" specs, as some others do (or is that just a marketing ploy)? Does it have the ports and inputs that you would find on others? Is there anything you might reasonably need to do with a router that you can't do with Apple Extreme? It looks the the Apple is priced quite a bit higher than many comparable other brands--is it worth the extra money?

Posted on Nov 29, 2010 11:17 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

158,208 points

Nov 29, 2010 11:55 AM in response to AB01

Hello AB01. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!

The best way to start is to review the 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station's (AEBSn) specifications, and then, compare them against other 802.11n routers that you are interested in. As you know, cost is only one factor.

You mention "streaming video." The AEBSn is capable of providing bandwidths of up to 300+ Mbps for wireless and 1 Gbps for Ethernet. The AEBSn, in itself, is not a multi-media server, but it can function as a NAS server with an attached USB hard drive. It can also support dedicated NAS devices connected to it by Ethernet.

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Answer 2

joudbren

Level 1

90 points

Nov 29, 2010 12:46 PM in response to AB01

The Extreme is very similar to other "simultaneous" dual band routers and they all meet the same basic specs. The price is actually not that far out of line when you compare it to the other brands that are capable of broadcasting both 2.4 and 5 ghz bands at the same time. My previous router was a Netgear WNDR3700. Nice piece of kit but I was having connection issues with it. Using the Extreme now and no problems. It simply works and I've never had to reboot it. (nice change!)

Another advantage of the Extreme is that it's the only router that I'm aware of that is capable of sending a "wake up" signal to a Mac computer. This works well for me as I have an Apple TV 2 that does home sharing with my iMac for music, video and pictures. If the iMac is asleep then you have to physically wake up the computer for the home sharing to work. Using an Extreme, the ATV can wake up the iMac automatically with no user interaction.

If you have a mostly Mac environment then the Extreme is an excellent choice. PC's and other equipment can also connect to it just fine and Apple provides a setup utility for both Mac and PC's to configure the router. The Extreme does not have a web based interface like other routers but uses a utility instead. Cheers!

James

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