airport extreme or linksys e4200

[cuti7399]

It's time for me upgrade the router. I can't really decide between these two so I'm asking for your opinions and inputs. Thanks all.

 

[Lifted]

My only experience with the airport extreme is from last Thursday evening when a coworker contacted me at home as her VPN wasn't working. After working on it for 30 minutes and noticing some odd behavior (Phase 1 negotiation worked fine, but Phase 2 was a no-show) I finally asked if she happened to get a new router as it was working fine for her a week or 2 ago. Her reply "Yeah, but why should that matter? It's just a wifi router. And this is a $200 Apple router, must be better than a $50 linksys."

😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

Little did I know the airport extreme has no web or ssh access. Everything must be done though a built-in utility in OS X, or a downloadable utility via Windows. I'll just say this utility leaves much to be desired and leave it at that.

VPN passthrough is advertised as a feature on these, but doesn't work, at least not with the latest firmware and perhaps certain combinations of VPN clients and hardware.

I told her to get a "real" router, even one of those refurb e3000's for $45, but she likes the white Apple one. 🙄

On the other hand, the e2000's & e3000's I've worked with have been great, both work excellent with stock firmware and support dd-wrt and tomato if you desire. I haven't heard anything bad about the 4200's though I don't know the status of alternate firmware availability.

 

[Bruce_luo]

Above all family router，for me ，by the reason of brand advantage，I'll choose Apple's product
linksys could brush the third party firmware ，but Apple not。
Amazon's evaluation E4200 is four star，but Apple is four and a half，in addition the compatibility of Apple for me is better😉😉

 

[JackMDS]

Technology wise the E4200 is a better Wireless Router than the Airport.

It is sad that after all of these years people do not get it that Apple products contain the same OEM hardware as anybody else.

Unlike PCs Apple sell specific closed hardware/software combo, thus makes it very easy to people who have humble needs and No interest in understating Technology to plug in, and use their "appliances".

If price is an indication Buy this e4200, it cost as much as the Airport so it must be good.

http://www.staples.com/Linksys-E4200...duct-nr_926999



😎

 

[cuti7399]

keep the comments/inputs coming, thanks

 

[rsutoratosu]

I have both and I agree, you can't just http into the apple stuff, you need to install that windows agent. yeah that linksys e4200 wasn't 50, i think i paid like 200 when it first came out.

That is the only wifi that does not randomly disconnect in my house. I never had to reboot it. I had trendnet, that thing was garbage, constantly rebooting it to get reconnected.

 

[Bill Brasky]

I own an e4200 and its been incredible so far. Great range, speed, and was easy to setup with the web based utility. I can get 5mbs at the fire hydrant down the street. 🙂

 

[jaiello]

I have 2 Air Port Extremes sitting here on the floor because they just flat do not work in my environment. I have two Linksys boxes that work great. YMMV.

 

[JimmiG]

I own an e4200 and its been incredible so far. Great range, speed, and was easy to setup with the web based utility. I can get 5mbs at the fire hydrant down the street. 🙂

Same here - well minus the fire hydrant thing since we don't have one on my street.

I have the V1 though, which uses a completely different chip set than the V2.

 

[Oyeve]

Simple nobrainer config=airport, true indepth config and security=anything else.

 

[alkemyst]

e4200 can be picked up refurb'd from Cisco for around $100-120.

The e4200V2 I do not think is as good.

Smallnetbuilder.com has reviews and performance specs of them all.

I like my e4200.

 

[cuti7399]

"Smallnetbuilder.com has reviews and performance specs of them all."

thanks for the info