Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What type of router should I get?

D

deuk1219

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 8, 2010
109
3
Atlanta, GA
Well, we have a linksys router that we have bought a few months ago at best buy. It was a pretty good router.
However, we have a new family member and some new devices at home.
We currently have...
1 iMac
1 Macbook Pro
1 Macbook Air
4 iPhone 4's
1 iPhone 3Gs (yes, five iphones in total)
1 iPod Touch
1 HP Laptop
1 Sony Vaio Laptop
EDIT:
1 PS3
1 Nitendo Wii
at our house that uses our wifi network.

Occasionaly, we have guests/friends coming over to our house.
They usually bring their laptop+smart phone that uses our wifi.
I dont know what the reason is, but our wireless internet is slower than ever. (we have charter cable internet).

My father has asked me to look for a router to buy for the house, because he's kind of pissed off at the sluggish internet.

What kind of router do you recommend? A business router perhaps?
Thank you!
 
Last edited:
An AirPort Extreme Base Station will do fine with those devices. You can even create a Guest Network for the guests you have.
I have one AEBS and it is quite strong, I could surf the web at acceptable speeds three floors down and 20 meters horizontally away, which surprised me.
 
I wouldn't get the apple router. It is a good bit of kit but way overpriced.

For general internet access any router will be able to support that many devices. You first need to identify what is making the internet sluggish. Most of the time this will just be that the total traffic for all the devices will be maxing out your internet 'pipe' not constrained by local effects.

The other big killer is wireless access. Try running cables to all the desktop computers. This will free up some of the airwaves for the mobile devices.

There is only a fixed amount of airwaves available. So on that note make sure your router is wireless N inc 5GHz range. This should allow some N capable devices to run on this freq band freeing up the 2.4 GHz band for more traffic.

Hope this helps
 
I have the Airport Extreme as well, and it's a great router. Although I don't have nearly as many devices as you, it should work well. If you notice any slowdowns when someone is downloading a large file on the Airport Extreme, that's most likely your actual internet connection rather than the router.

I actually recommend the Airport Extreme even if you don't have ANY Apple items - it just seems to be the fastest router with minimal setup.

And yes, it's worth 179.00.
 
ndraves said:
I wouldn't get the apple router. It is a good bit of kit but way overpriced.

For general internet access any router will be able to support that many devices. You first need to identify what is making the internet sluggish. Most of the time this will just be that the total traffic for all the devices will be maxing out your internet 'pipe' not constrained by local effects.

The other big killer is wireless access. Try running cables to all the desktop computers. This will free up some of the airwaves for the mobile devices.

There is only a fixed amount of airwaves available. So on that note make sure your router is wireless N inc 5GHz range. This should allow some N capable devices to run on this freq band freeing up the 2.4 GHz band for more traffic.

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

It is in the 5ghz range.
By the way, some of the kids are gaming(high end fps games), streaming HD videos, netflix, downloading movies, and video calling constantly.
 
deuk1219 said:
It is in the 5ghz range.
By the way, some of the kids are gaming(high end fps games), streaming HD videos, netflix, downloading movies, and video calling constantly.
Click to expand...

All of that at the same time? No wonder it seems "sluggish".
 
I recommend the Airport Extreme. Save yourself $50 and order a refurb from Apple... that's what I did.
 
Insilin1i said:
I recommend the Netgear WNDR3700. If everyone is doing all those things at the same time, you might be maxed on your internet connection.
Click to expand...

I too recommend the Netgear, I was never a netgear fan until I got this router, supreme router, I tried it over the Lynksis 4200 and it performed in my house better, it also allows you to set up a guest login for friends when they come over, it has a very good range for the antennas, I often game on xbox live and My wife watches shows on HBO on my mbp and it doesn't get laggy at all, the router it's upstairs while I do the gaming and Hbo show time watching downstairs. Good luck.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

SolarJ said:
Airport Extreme all the way
Click to expand...

I wouldn't. The extreme has fairly average throughout rates compared to similarly or lesser priced alternatives from linksys, netgear and so forth.

Check out smallnetbuilder.com if you don't believe me
 
What is your connection speed? Previous posts suggested you may have a bandwidth issue, not necessarily a router issue. I have heard some people get all uptight that an old router has only a 10mbit port to connect to their cable modem but they only had a 5mbit connection. I would make sure you have that covered then I would consider if you have a high bandwidth need need to communicate between your computers. That's where you might want gigabit networking for your wired computers and wifi-N for your wireless traffic.

Really, it sounds like you may be saturating your bandwidth with all the different users online at the same time. I would seriously consider implementing QOS, quality of service, and you may be able to do it on your existing router. Most of the new routers have it. Whether you have to stay with your existing connection speed or are able to upgrade, QOS can be a valuable tool to ensure a decent experience for everyone.

Btw I use a Smoothwall router, for better security, but if you are not a nerd tinkerer I recommend one of the other nice routers mentioned by other posters.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back