Bye bye Apple routers

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antoniosk

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#205658 22-Nov-2016 07:08

Reports out this morning that Apple has dropped development of their Airport routers. Nice bits of kit in their time, but they havent kept pace with technology (hardware or software), and the absence of support in the software for direct connection to fibre connections in NZ (VLAN support) was a shame.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/21/apple-reportedly-stops-developing-airport-wifi-router-products-moving-employees-to-other-projects/

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/21/apple-axes-router-division-apparently-signaling-the-end-of-airport

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/21/with-apple-abandoning-airport-here-are-the-best-alternative-wi-fi-routers-for-mac-users

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Behodar

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#1675303 22-Nov-2016 07:39

I was hoping that Apple would add working IPv6 support one of these days, but it looks like that'll never happen now :(

chiefie

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#1675304 22-Nov-2016 07:43

Truly a sad moment as I have 2 Airport Extremes v5 and Airport Express v2.

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Behodar

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#1675311 22-Nov-2016 08:11

Yeah, I have two Extremes (an original 802.11n model plus a newer one) and a no-longer-in-service "spaceship" one.

chiefie

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#1675314 22-Nov-2016 08:24

OT. So what are good routers these days for ease-of-configure with VLAN tagging and on-par features-to-features to Airport routers?

I'm running one Airport Extreme as the main router to a cable modem with another Aiport Extreme and Airport Express bridging to the main router, feeding 2.4ghz and 5ghz internal and guest SSIDs - for mesh coverage.

I know Airport routers don't do UPnP so would be good to have that feature back on, and WPS for ease of connecting. Oh and ideally 4 LAN ports on each router for local-site ethernet connections.

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jnimmo

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#1675374 22-Nov-2016 09:38

That is a real shame, all they really needed to do was add VLAN tagging support and would've been a very good choice for UFB in NZ!

antoniosk

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#1675492 22-Nov-2016 12:57

jnimmo:

That is a real shame, all they really needed to do was add VLAN tagging support and would've been a very good choice for UFB in NZ!

And bump up the horsepower of the CPU so it could process gigabit speeds. As it is, various folks report the speed is about 450mbps in bridge mode and 250-300mbps in router mode

Chiefie: sbiddle and others seem to love the Ubiquiti Edgerouter's.... thinking I'm going for one of those.Havent looked for pricing yet

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hio77

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#1675502 22-Nov-2016 13:15

damn, what a shame.

Guess if they are dropping their router product line, they will just have to actually support wifi compliance properly.. not like they have a router to sell to magically fix all your apple issues now!

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jonb

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#1675510 22-Nov-2016 13:33

hio77:
damn, what a shame.

Guess if they are dropping their router product line, they will just have to actually support wifi compliance properly.. not like they have a router to sell to magically fix all your apple issues now!

Was thinking that too, after all the posts on geekzone about iPads and iPhone not behaving nicely.

gehenna

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#1675514 22-Nov-2016 13:45

Damn, airports have been good quality - especially in an all Apple environment.

Dunnersfella

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#1675595 22-Nov-2016 18:22

What are the odds that they buy a company that makes routers...

antoniosk

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#1675600 22-Nov-2016 18:35

Dunnersfella:
What are the odds that they buy a company that makes routers...

That means they need to
1. Buy a company
2. Take on support for existing products
3. Grandfather the lot
4. Come up with new ones

Cheaper and easier to just keep staff

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alasta

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#1675640 22-Nov-2016 20:24

hio77:

damn, what a shame.

Guess if they are dropping their router product line, they will just have to actually support wifi compliance properly.. not like they have a router to sell to magically fix all your apple issues now!

I hope so. I have an Airport Extreme which I bought because I wanted to be confident of no compatibility issues.

Next time I buy a router I am going to have to wade through a mountain of conflicting opinions as to which 3rd party product is good, bad or indifferent.