AirPort Extreme

Steedie

Steedie

Steedie

Man of Honour
Joined
29 Jun 2004
Posts
21,639
Location
Oxfordshire
Hey all,

Looking to replace the garbage Sky broadband router with something decent. And of course, being the Apple fan boy that I am, my first thought was to look at one of these.

Spec wise it all sounds very good, but how are they in the real world? Will it be a noticeable improvement over the existing router? And am I right in thinking I'll just be able to swap them out and it will just work?

And finally, should I really be looking at getting something else altogether?

Does anyone have one or any experience of them?

Thanks guys
 
Do they support MER? It's a pain to get any aftermarket router to work on Sky as you have to use wireshark and get the MER details.

I think the extreme does, but if you're on a static IP with fibre pro then you may have to turn this off.

I seriously looked at the extreme (in Time Capsule format), but the lack of advanced features and difficulty in simple things such as DHCP reservations put me off.
 
I've got sky fibre and I'm also looking to get an AirPort Extreme. As far I can tell you just plug it into the sky router and away you go, just disable the wifi in the sky router if you want. I'm waiting till after WWDC in a week or so in case they release as update as the current version is a bit old now.
 
I've tried everything possible with my Time Capsule on Sky Fibre Pro. It will not work as anything but an access point. You can use it for the wireless network and switch off the Sky supplied router Wifi. Works well, but you might as well aim for a good modem/router that supports MER.
 
I've had one for about 3 years now, quite happy with it.

I had it working with a Sky modem/router previously, and more recently a BT HomeHub for Fibre.

With Sky, I did have the AEBS performing modem duties too for a while, but now just have it in wifi router mode with BT. It's fairly simple to setup, pretty much just connect it to your existing modem/router, disable wifi on the original and away you go.

I've also since extended the network with an Airport Express, which is upstairs.

Whilst not officially supported, you can plug any powered USB hard drive into the AEBS, and have it behave as a TimeCapsule too - again I've been doing this for a few years with no problems.
 
Turbo-G said:
Whilst not officially supported, you can plug any powered USB hard drive into the AEBS, and have it behave as a TimeCapsule too - again I've been doing this for a few years with no problems.
Click to expand...
I always post this as a disclaimer, however many have had issues with this setup - myself included. It used to be supported in the past but hasn't been for a while now. I found that my backups would fail after a couple of weeks and would need to be redone from scratch, with consistency. It may work for you however. Luckily, TM will inform you if any problems occur.

Overall, I'd not recommend an AEBS. They're fine, however you can better performance and close-enough reliability for less money elsewhere. According to SmallNetBuilder, even my lowly N66U beats the current AEBS in terms of performance at medium to long distances IIRC.
 
Sorry for dragging this slightly off topic, but is it possible to use a normal Airport Express and turn off all routing/wireless? Basically just having it as a normal client on my home network.

I want one so that I can use my SONOS speakers as Airplay devices.
 
You can disable/enable wifi, and disable/enable airplay independently of each other via the airport utility app - so I think you could.
 
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