new airport extreme good choice?

rippling · 10 Jun 2013 at 23:19

i have been stung buying a expensive netgear router , been plagued by adsl disconnects and wifi disconnects cost over £120.!

I want something that is very reliable and "just works" would the new airport extreme be a good choice for me ?

I dont have a mac but have iphone 5 and pc`s , my amp dvd youveiw box etc is run bt ethernet lan .?

GTRacer · 10 Jun 2013 at 23:26

I switched from a Netgear based network to an Apple one (1x Extreme and 1x Express) a few years ago (2010 I think), haven't had any problems with it, the speeds are good and it's easy to set up. There are usually about 3x iPhones, two Macs, and two PCs connected to the network at the same time in this household, it's been rock solid. AirPlay through the Express is a nice touch too.

lamboman · 10 Jun 2013 at 23:27

If it is anything like any of the previous AirPort Extremes, it will be very reliable, offer decent enough range and speeds compared to the competition, but skimp out on features for simplicity.

It depends what you need really, I like my AEBS but I'd look at the Asus models now.

Tunney · 10 Jun 2013 at 23:54

I'm very happy with my Time Capsule. It's been running fine for years.

The only downside is that there's no modem built-in. I've got FTTC now, which requires an external modem, so it's a moot point at the moment.

rippling · 11 Jun 2013 at 00:50

just looked does this connect ok to an adsl line ? i dont seem to see the connection port? or is modem not buil into it ?

Phrozenpenguin · 11 Jun 2013 at 01:36

No modem built in. Probably want a Draytek Vigor 120.

Turbo-G · 11 Jun 2013 at 01:41

They're good devices, had mine for a couple of years, but you will need some form of modem, or re-use old router in bridge/pass-through mode.

I had a vigor 120 also, quite unreliable I found. Have resorted to using the sky supplied router in bridge mode which is now rock steady.

thewanted · 11 Jun 2013 at 07:05

The AirPort Extreme allows you to plug in a USB hard drive, but I can't find any info that states whether the drive can be used for Time Machine backups. Does anyone know?

Tunney · 11 Jun 2013 at 07:22

thewanted said:
The AirPort Extreme allows you to plug in a USB hard drive, but I can't find any info that states whether the drive can be used for Time Machine backups. Does anyone know?

Yes, it can. I've got a Drobo plugged into mine and it backs up several machines.

thewanted · 11 Jun 2013 at 07:42

Tunney said:
Yes, it can. I've got a Drobo plugged into mine and it backs up several machines.

Awesome, thanks! I'm definitely buying one then. I've put up with my horrible BT HomeHub 3 for far too long.

lamboman · 11 Jun 2013 at 11:07

The choice of modem depends more on your ISP's equipment than anything else.

Should also warn you of using the AirPort Extreme for TM backups. This may change with the new one, however many users (including myself) have had plenty of reliability issues with this setup. I'd wait for reviews/new users to report back.

Beerbaron · 11 Jun 2013 at 11:16

The airport we have at work lacks a significant amount of features. You have to reboot the thing just to add a static ip, thats crazy. It has been reliable but like most apple products lacks some basics for even everyday use. Check out the features first and what you are likely to use.

PardonTheWait · 11 Jun 2013 at 11:52

thewanted said:
The AirPort Extreme allows you to plug in a USB hard drive, but I can't find any info that states whether the drive can be used for Time Machine backups. Does anyone know?

It can, but it's not officially supported. It used to be, but it's utter, utter rubbish so they stopped officially saying it worked. Complete toilet, don't do it. Just get a cheap NAS drive to go with it if you get the extreme imo. My WD one was only about £100 for 2tb.

Turbo-G · 13 Jun 2013 at 00:24

I have an external hard drive plugged into my 5th gen AEBS, and it works just fine as a Time Machine

Raymond Lin · 13 Jun 2013 at 00:28

I have a TC and plugged into another 2TB HD in the USB, I can TM into that just fine.

Rossmac · 16 Jun 2013 at 11:40

I have had a generation 1 Airport Extreme since launch.

With ADSL it was a pain as there was no built-in modem, but as mentioned above, FTTC requires its own OpenReach modem, so I don't mind so much anymore.

The Airport Disk is fine and I can share it with all of my machines around the house (even Xbox 1 running XBMC). Spin up times on the HDDs are slow though, and it sometimes makes for a sucky experience (navigating folders when it's spinning up). This could obviously be my 3.5" HDDs though, a 2.5" one I had for a while was much quicker.

Time Machine backups cames along soon after the device was released, I think it was late 2007 or something, and they've worked brilliantly for me ever since. Never have had any problems syncing or retrieving files. I partitioned my current 2TB HDD into 750GB for Time Machine and the rest for user content. Therefore once it runs out of space backing up my 128GB and my other 256GB MacBooks it will start to get rid of old files within its own partition and then I know there will always be some space on the user partition.

I'm probably rambling now, but the only downside like others have said is the software.

They updated it last year sometime to version 6.0 and they removed a few features which I used. DHCP Client ID being one of them (used to set the BT Infinity username/password). I use v5.6.2 or something similar to configure this now. Pain in the ass.

Yeah, they're alright. I would buy again.