Filed under: Hardware, Internet Tools
Mac-Friendly Third-Party Routers
While many of us would probably like to have an official Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, it seems rather overpriced to me. Given that you can pick up a router on sale at Best Buy for $40, it can be a bit hard to swallow Apple's $199 price tag. While it's true that the Airport Extreme has a lot of nice extra features (like a modem and USB printer sharing), I still don't think it's enough to justify the price tag.For all the cheapskates like me, MacFixIt has a nice listing of Mac-friendly third party routers. Although practically all routers are compatible with the Mac, some are easier to manage than others, and only some manufacturers offer tech support to Mac users. Preview: of the most common brands, Belkin and Netgear come out on top, with D-Link and Linksys further down the list.
[Via MacVolPlace]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Steve in Denmark said 6:44AM on 1-09-2007
You wanna move over here to Europe mate.
With the exchange rate and all, $199's about twoppence and a pickled egg.
I'll take two!
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T said 6:47AM on 1-09-2007
Odd, since Linksys routers are one of the few compatible with Apple's implementation of WDS - meaning that if you want your Airport Express to function as a bridge with an active Ethernet port, Linksys is your best bet. It definitely didn't work with my old Netgear router.
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the cable guy said 7:19AM on 1-09-2007
Buy a cheap linksys and replace the firmware with DD-WRT (http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/index.php)
Better, more range and a lot more stable than standard firmware.
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Kim said 8:23AM on 1-09-2007
Actually, I've had 3 linksys routers crap out on me, and none of N or Pre-N routers are worth the cardboard they're shipped in. I just got two Buffalo high-power G routers, and they're wonderful, speed and stability-wise. Plus they support WDS, and they have a switch on the bottom to instantly turn them into a bridge and not a router, should you just need to extend your network.
Buffalo for the win!
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Hammo said 8:27AM on 1-09-2007
To #3 - couldn't agree more.
Bought a pile of crap Linksys about 2 weeks back that refused to play ball. Found the instructions for dd-wrt micro and now it's working like a champion.
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Victor Agreda Jr said 8:51AM on 1-09-2007
I bought 2 Apple base stations and the first died within 24 hours. Powered up, but wouldn't connect (not even ethernet). Returned it for another. The other was dead when I opened the box. They sure are pretty, but I'd never rely on one again-- too much markup for pretty white plastic and a chrome Apple logo. Maybe Steve will announce a return to the high quality standards of 30 years ago?
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Tom Boucher said 9:32AM on 1-09-2007
I had one of these for two years. When I upgraded my broadband I found out one important tidbit.
The router is the worst performing router ever made in converting from ethernet to wireless.
Directly connected to a cable modem and using speakeasy's speed test I was getting 8MB/s down, 512KB/s up like I'm supposed too.
Hooked up to the Airport Extreme and less than a foot from it, 1MB/s down, 384K up.
I got a Netgear 824. 7.8MB/s down, 512KB/s up over wireless.
I'm not going to rush to buy a new apple wireless product until a few people test it and post the real numbers. Was very disappointed.
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Mario Aeby said 9:34AM on 1-09-2007
After having bought and configured routers of all three "big" manufacturers (say: Linksys, D-Link, Netgear) the latter comes out as the clear winner. Beautiful design (Woman Acceptance Factor++), a clean und usable web-interface (btw. I still think Airport should have one as well), easy installation (even my girlfriend was able to set this thing up - wow!).
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DrWho said 9:41AM on 1-09-2007
Talking of quality, I've been using the same airport extreme base station and airport express for several years now (4?) with not one single problem. I hope apple maintain this high quality standard for another 30 years.
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Jersey said 9:44AM on 1-09-2007
Belkin Pre-N. Ridiculous range, configurable until you're blue in the face, and the most reliable out of the 8 or so units I've gone through.
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Laurel Wilson said 9:56AM on 1-09-2007
I have had two Belkin routers in a row: they sent me the second one, unprompted and free, after many a conversation with tech support about the first one, which has never worked properly. The second one isn't doing much better, I'm sorry to say. It was certainly nice of them to send me a new one for free, but it would have been even nicer if one or both of them had actually worked. Back to Apple for me!
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Jeff said 10:31AM on 1-09-2007
Funny you should bring this up now. I just replaced my very non-conventional router (a DSL wireless modem --only being used as a router-- hooked up to my DSL wired modem --don't ask) with two Apple Expresses. The old router worked fine but the coverage ended just outside our bedroom no matter where I moved the router and, after months of trying to open up a port on it to network my TiVo, I gave up.
So, last week I was researching new routers. Linksys either got rave or extremely poor reviews for Macs. Finally, I decided that spending the extra money was worth the amount of extra time I might have to spend configuring the non-Apple router.
I bought two Expresses, got the new router up and running and then created a bridge with the second one. And, it took me two minutes to network my TiVo.
I'm in heaven and my wife thinks I'm a network genius (that alone is worth the extra price!).
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Pinoy Mac Lover said 10:33AM on 1-09-2007
I was thinking of getting an airport extreme over a year ago. The USB printer sharing was a feature that appealed to me as well. But I agree with the author, it was just too expensive even with the added features that other routers didn't have. I ended up getting a NetGear wireless G router. Works pretty well until now and it really was pretty easy to set up. I got it for around $30.
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Tom said 11:20AM on 1-09-2007
The Apple wireless products are pretty nice to set up, but for some reason they insist on using non-standard language (just to be different?) that makes the finer customizable details seem foreign even to someone who's set up 50 routers. Also, in every test I've ever seen, the Apple base stations are the worst performing wireless routers in both range and throughput. The Expresses are fine, but the base station stands as the only Apple product I actually recommend against.
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steve harley said 2:38PM on 1-09-2007
be aware that some routers (Linksys in particular iirc) don't pass AppleTalk; this matters, for example, if you have an AppleTalk laser printer, such as Apple's or the old HPs that live forever; as a workaround, you can usually switch to ip printing, but you lose interactivity, such as an alert that your printer's jammed or out of paper
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Adam Ek said 8:15PM on 1-09-2007
Any suggestions for an Airport Base Station alternative that does include a Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) modem. Most wired and wireless routers I've seen are designed for broadband. My father lives up in northern Maine, no cable, no DSL, no broadband wireless either (he's near the bottom of a steep valley). His 56k modem sometimes can only connect at 18k over his current phone lines. Not great network speed, but it would be nice if he and my mother could share the modem connection over their respective laptops. Airport Base Station can do this, but I haven't seen anything else.
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Zimmie said 1:06AM on 1-10-2007
For me, the main reason to get Apple's access points is that I can manage a huge number of them from a nice little client-side program. None of this web interface garbage that works in some browsers but not in others.
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Speedmaster said 8:18AM on 1-13-2007
Good info, thanks! I've used two different Linksys routers over the last 2 years w/ my iBook /w no troubles. Other than needing to upgrade the firmware once on the first one.
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/
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bnaidis3 said 8:16AM on 2-04-2007
I am looking for a dsl modem and wireless router that will work with a new cd2 macbook. The mac book doesn't work with my belkin dsl modem wireless router combo. I will probibly go with the apple extreme and a dsl modem. I need to get it right the first time because I live in africa and my visits to the states are few. Thanks
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