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We have many Apple devices connecting wirelessly to the router, and it is common for the iPhones, iPods & iPad to "lose" their wifi connectivity with the router, requiring a router reboot to resolve this situation. When they get into this state, the devices indicate only 3G is available (or there is no Internet connectivity in the case of the iPods and wifi only iPad), but going into the network settings reveal that they are connected but have been assigned an IP address outside of the range set up in the router. When this happens it is usually not all devices that are affected, but only one or two of them.
In addition to this problem, I've also had a few spontaneous router reboots recently, further indicating that it's not coping well with its current workload. This is something that never happened under its lessened pre-Christmas workload.
It is also common for the Apple TV to lose wifi connectivity, but I suspect that may be more an issue with that device, as a reboot of the Apple TV will resolve it (which doesn't work with the other Apple devices).
As a result, I'm looking for a replacement modem/router that will be Apple friendly. It also needs to support the Bonjour networking protocol, which as I found out when I got this router isn't always supported (Belkin Share, looking at you here), resulting in significant issues on a LAN with multiple OSX machines.
I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to consider an Apple Airport Extreme. They seem pretty overpriced for a wireless router, but I'm working on the logic that it would be designed to play well in an Apple ecosystem. I also have a few non-Apple devices that connect, so it would need to be able to cope well with those too. Does anyone have any experience with the Airport Extreme, and could offer any insight into how good this device is?
In order to do this though, I'd need to be able to configure my existing modem/router so it would effectively only act as an ADSL modem, and have the Airport Extreme act as the router for the LAN. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Finally, I'm happy to take suggestions for other modem/routers which may fit the bill, provided they aren't too expensive. I'm looking for a device that has at least 4 Gigabit LAN ports, must work well in a networked environment with both OSX and Windows machines, and be able to handle the load of multiple wifi connections. Below is a list of all the devices that currently connect (wireless connectivity unless specified otherwise:-
iMac (wired)
Macbook Pro (wired and wireless)
2x iPhone 4
2x iPod Touch (latest gen)
iPad 2
Apple TV2
HP Laptop
Huawei X3 Android phone
Huawei X5 Android phone
Tivo
PS3
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