Which new wireless router?

So I was looking at the Netgear Nighthawk and the Apple AirPort Extreme Wireless Base Station. Thoughts between those two or other ideas? Open to suggestions and trying to stay below $200.

 

I strongly suggest this one:

ASUS RT-AC66U Dual-Band Wireless-AC1750

 

Interesting. I have that one now and I'm giving it to my father in law.

 

Which Netgear Nighthawk? There are several versions - the first version, the R6300, uses the same 600MHz CPU as your current RT-AC66U. The second, the R7000, uses a much more powerful 1GHz CPU. The R8000 uses the same 1GHz CPU but roughly doubles the radio power, and offloads some of the CPU work onto the radio processors.

The Airport Extreme uses an 800MHz cpu that's in between the R6300/RT-AC66U and the R7000.

CPU power is important for routers because there's a difference between the speed the router can talk over the radio, and at which it can relay traffic from your computer to the rest of the world. I have gigabit internet at my apartment (which I'm moving away from... sniff... gonna miss you torrents...) and if I plugged my computer directly into the wall via cable, I could get about 950+mbit/s to the world. Laptop to laptop over wifi via the wireless router (aka, just local traffic with no routing), I could hit about 300mbit/s. Laptop to world through the router was only about 110mbit/s. Routing traffic from one network to another actually begins to be pretty heavy on processor power once you reach gigabit-level speeds.

All of these routers will use similar radio chipsets and processors - in all reality they probably all use the same Broadcom components.

Ultimately it really depends on your use case. Is your household mostly Apple products? Get the Airport. Do you have gigabit service? Get the R7000 or R8000. No to both? Stick with your Asus, unless it's giving you problems.

 

Good points on Apple. I have a mix. MacBook Pro and MacAir. The MacBook Pro is dual boot with Windows a lot of the time. Two iPhones, an iPad, a Surface Pro 3 and an Alienware desktop, so I'm kinda split across the board.

My internet will be 40 mbps (gonna miss my 95 mbps from Comcast but worth it to be away from Atlanta). I do A LOT of streaming from my desktop to my other computers to switch files back and forth and use two Apple TV's for my movies, both online and from the desktop Windows server.

Guess that muddies the water a little more? LOL

 

And I should add, I now see the Asus AC-1900. Looks like the next iteration of my AC-66. It looks to have some good data rates as well.

 

My router crapped out on me a few weeks ago, I researched and purchased this one (TP-LINK Archer C7 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router AC1750) for about $99...had above average reviews.

After making a run to my cable provider store to upgrade some set top boxes I was asked if I needed a wifi router and was given one. Food for thought if your cable provider is one of the larger company's.

 

This. I have it and its great. Use for several devices and Roku streaming.
Dual band, and great range. Also DD-WRT ready.

 

for a lot of the population this may be ok, but for me,having to use the FiOS router for cable, but it's limited to wireless G, and only operates at 10/100, and there are a lot of things that can not be customized.

I have hooked up my own ASUS router to segment networks, add a "public" wifi for guests, and get gigabit connectivity, because wired LAN connections rule.

 

The Asus AC-66 is the one I had that I'm giving my father in law. Looking at the new offerings, it seems the AC-68 is out now and garnering really good reviews. Believe I'll be going with that.

Thanks for the help, y'all!

 

it looks like we didn't help with anything...just sayin'

 

Actually, y'all pointed me back in the direction of the Asus again. I hadn't been thinking about the new one, but the comments on the AC-66 led me back to the reviews and tracked over to the newer one.

 

Hmmm, now you got me wondering if this is a crap router. This is it, if you have time gimme your opinion?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...t4nBZewzrA2vsuyFbpCY7RoCCp3w_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

My current favorites are surplus Cisco 2811's and 2821's. Dirt cheap. Feature rich and won't be dead in 8 to 16 months. You have to have a little bit of brain power but never having to power cycle a piece of crap consumer router is worth it.

I've got Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Pro on the way to play with as the possible replacement for the surplus Cisco gear. THhe smaller EdgeRouter Lite is the better choice for the "advance consumer" user.

 

I'm partial to Asus or Linksys routers. I have had good experiences with both. The one you linked seems pretty good, but if there was an Asus equivalent, I would probably go that way, and the one mentioned at the top link the RT66 seems to be well reviewed.

 

I should have mentioned I never use the same device for routing and wireless purposes. You'll get better products in both by separating their functionality.

 

Very true, however you move into territory far beyond an average homeowner's knowledge level.

 

I've done the linksys and Asus route forever, and fell in love with the asus stuff. But last year my router died and I put in an Apple Airport Extreme in the house and put a Apple Airport Express in the garage. They bind together as one wireless network so your device just sees one network, but I have the two routers wirelessly linked to each other at between 150 mbps and 300 mbps. I use the hard ethernet port in the express to drive a Tivo mini and use the audio out port to drive airplay on an old stereo in the garage. Took about 15 minutes to set up and get running and I've never once had to power cycle them since the day I turned them on. The garage gets super hot in the summer and the airport express hasn't skipped a beat. I'm a convert.

 

Holy crap...Ryan is alive.

 

Ha!
I've never stopped lurking though.
Might even come spectate at TGPR on Sat.