Dont really want to be paying money to the evil empire just for some wireless gear. Most of the cheap dual band kit seems to be routers, and past experiance has shown that unless you can kill the wan interface on them, they dont have a great stability.
Really do need to get something done. There is so much 2.4GHz crap around here now that I am lucky to get 5MB/s across the wifi in the same room as the AP, and the flatmate is now finding that his wireless headphones are dropping out heaps. Would explain all the dropped commands to the wireless lightbulbs I was having.
richms: Dont really want to be paying money to the evil empire just for some wireless gear. Most of the cheap dual band kit seems to be routers, and past experiance has shown that unless you can kill the wan interface on them, they dont have a great stability.
I'm no Apple fanboy. Looking for a good AP to stream video to a Samsung tablet and Xbox. Remembering that for 5GHz you probably want to mount it high and visible, the Airport Express is probably the most discrete of the non-PoE APs I looked at.
Personally I'm going with a PoE unit for simplicity and aesthetics, probably a Ubiquiti UAP-Pro, but still in planning at the moment.
It's a router but I was using it as a straight AP with the DHCP server turned off and nothing plugged into the WAN port. 2.4GHz is OK in my area and I wanted something OpenWRTable so am no longer using it.
nickb800: Yep, hard to take Apple recommendations as objective advice I know, but the Airport Express is a great option and the apple tax is pretty minimal
It's like somebody forgot to multiply by the gouge factor :) For the price of an Airport Express you could buy two pieces of vinyl with magnets in them... sorry "Smart" covers.
hashbrown: An Airport Express isn't bad value for an Apple product and if you're hooking up iDevices, might save a few headaches.
I'm also interested in an 5GHz N access point, but will the Airport Express give me any headaches if I'm not using any iDevices? E.g. Linux pc, Nokia and Android phones, Android and webOS tablets, etc.
alexx: I'm also interested in an 5GHz N access point, but will the Airport Express give me any headaches if I'm not using any iDevices? E.g. Linux pc, Nokia and Android phones, Android and webOS tablets, etc.
iDevices didn't even exist when I got my first AirPort :)
I moved to the new AirPort Express from a relatively new Linksys router which was giving me no end of trouble with AirPlay.
The new AirPort Express has been flawless. It also authenticates my PPPoE connection with Compass wireless. I have the following connected with no problems: 1 x Nexus 7, 1 x Note 2, 2 x PC's, 3 x iPhones, 2 x Apple TV's, Old AirPort Express, Tivo, Panasonic TV, Macbook Pro...so yes I would recommend one.
alexx: I'm also interested in an 5GHz N access point, but will the Airport Express give me any headaches if I'm not using any iDevices? E.g. Linux pc, Nokia and Android phones, Android and webOS tablets, etc.
iDevices didn't even exist when I got my first AirPort :)
No problems with Android or webOS here.
Sounds good, but when I searched it appeared that the airport utility needs a Mac or iOS device or Windows? With a bit more searching for "configure airport express with linux", I found pages suggesting running the windows program in a virtual machine or running wine to launch the airport utility.
Some friends have iPad/Macbook, my son has a windows pc and I have use of a windows laptop from work, so it wouldn't be impossible for me to work around the limitations, but it would be good to know if there was a way to configure with Linux or another option such as android/webOS.
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