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Review: 802.11ac Synology RT2600ac router is the best AirPort replacement we've found yet
802.11ad in the 60GHz band is coming. But no iPhone or Mac supports it at this time. You could only use it with a USB adapter at this time. Give it six months to a year, and that should change. But my experience with it so far is limited. What I have heard is that it works very well for line of sight, but walls are problematic. We'll be looking at it in the new year.hodar said:How I wish that Tim Cook had not killed the Apple router business unit.I have had several routers (Linksys, Linksys, Asus, Netgear, etc) that work great out of the box; then about a year later, they start exhibiting what I call "Router Rot". They work, then slow down and require a reset to restore full functionality. This continues to degrade where the router needs to be reset weekly, then every other day, and finally daily. Not sure if this is a sign of thermal, as in the thermal paste has dried out - or degradation of capacitors, or a combination of both.But, when I finally was sick of it, that I listened to my buddy, and paid the extra for an Apple - this annual trip to the electronics store ended. My old 802.11n router works just fantastic, never needs to be reset- it's a frickin' rock. I now use this as an extension to my Air Port Extreme tower, which is 802.11ac. I am lucky enough to be connected to fiber, so my home has 150-250 mbps (I could boost this to 1 Gbps for another $15/month - but at the present speeds - seriously, why bother).If Apple made a router, that supported whatever is beyond 802.11ac - I would be among the first to say "take my money".
The Synology is one we've had for a year and change. It's relevant because they're introducing their MR mesh router nodes for it. It hasn't suffered router rot (something I saw with a lot of Linksys and SMC I've had over the years. Synology has been a rock, like you say, and this is using it on AT&T 1gbps fiber and Google 1gbps fiber.
Bad capacitors were a thing of the early 2000s, mostly. It was a cost-cutting measure to use Chinese capacitors instead of Japanese ones, and manufacturing processes weren't up to snuff for the part substitutions. You'd see them leak out the bottom, or balloon the top up, or both. Your 802.11n AirPort is probably from around 2006, by which time most of the bad caps were gone.
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Review: 802.11ac Synology RT2600ac router is the best AirPort replacement we've found yet
Airport was lovely.MplsP said:
Yeah - the Airport and a lot of the other newer routers had a much nicer design so you didn't mind leaving it out on a shelf somewhere. This thing looks more like a Romulan ship that you need to hide away. Maybe you could disguise it as a piece of modern art?racerhomie3 said:Looks so ugly. Disgusting even.
Amplifi HD and Amplifi Instant Router try to mimic that - but they don't perform as well at speed or wifi signal, and don't do Time Machine.
What are you to do, pick something functional, or something that looks nice, when you can't have both? -
Review: 802.11ac Synology RT2600ac router is the best AirPort replacement we've found yet
Hi Charles,charlesn said:Reviewing routers in a meaningful way that measures throughput performance in various networking scenarios is not for the casual reviewer. You can't approach it the same way you would for the newest iOS game-of-the-minute. Yet that is the approach taken here. In the super competitive field of routers, how do you "review" a newcomer to the market--and award it a perfect score no less--without a single measurement of performance and how that stacks up against the competition? All you've provided is an overview of the software package that accompanies a hardware product, with a generic summary of hardware performance ("rivals mesh systems") that's based on who knows what because you appear to have done none of the throughput performance measurement work that goes into a comprehensive and useful router review. This is one of the most disappointing and useless reviews I've read on AI.
In response to the question from Jsh56 above: if the WfFi performance you're getting out of your AE Extreme is not causing you any issues--i.e., sluggish performance and/or weak signal areas--then sticking with your AE Extreme may be fine. Some of that answer will depend on how many devices are on your network and the distance your WfFi signal has to cover. I switched from an AE Extreme Tower w/Time Capsule to a new router back in June and I noticed an immediate and significant difference is throughput speed and the elimination of weak signal areas in my apartment. And I'm continuing to use my Extreme Tower as the storage device for Time Machine backups--I simply shut off the radios on the AE Extreme and connected it via Ethernet to the new router. My iMac and MacBook still back up to it automatically with no problems.
We have a test setup that has a computer on the WAN side and a computer on the LAN side, and we WGET files across them to see how well the router routes. It's mildly annoying to set up and tear down, but we do it. This test setup eliminates variability in ISP or links after the ISP. I apologize for not including a table showing the results of copying files across at speed.
We have also done signal strength and dispersion tests in a number of different homes with this router, and have the heatmaps to show for it. As a standalone router, it really does match or outperform some of the mesh systems we have tested in the past. The Amplifi systems, for example, are very directional: the main units tend to have the strongest signal coming off their front faces with the touchscreen LCDs.
We do not compare routers to each other in the same review - that is, we name the one unit we're reviewing and don't name others we have reviewed in the past. The short summary of those comparisons is, in terms of routing and wifi signal strength and dispersion, Synology is on par with the Zyxel 3000 we reviewed not long ago, and better than either of Amplifi's products we reviewed in the past. Synology comes out far ahead because they don't cripple the configuration in all the ways that all the others do - performance and options = top score. -
Hebrew voice of Siri sues Apple, says it didn't obtain proper rights
You have to do the currency conversion. 66000 USD sounds weird, but 250,000 ILS is a nice, round number. I don't know how she arrived at that number for damages, but a quarter of a million shekels is a lot more sensible of a number than 66 thousand US.neilm said:"Galit Gura-Eini is asking for about $66,000 in damages according to Calcalist, saying she was surprised to learn she'd become Siri when the Hebrew version of the AI assistant debuted in 2016. Earlier in 2018, she reportedly asked Apple to remove her voice but had the request turned down.
Part of the problem, according to a complaint filed through a district court in Tel Aviv, is that while Gura-Eini's voice is "widely identified and associated" with her real-life persona, through Siri it's been turned "into a vehicle for improper and humiliating speech." This includes sexist, racist, and violent phrases.
The complaint insists that when Gura-Eini originally recorded her voice for Nuance in 2007, she granted rights for use in speech production software and "legitimate" purposes only."
So, "improper and humiliating speech"... but oh, $66 grand will take care of it. Now that's integrity! I'd guess that the amount is finely calculated to be below the threshold of a major corporation's potential interest in litigation expenditure.
"Legitimate purposes" probably means lawful purposes. Unless Nuance was totally incompetent she would have signed a boilerplate release with them back in 2007, just as all hired talent does. Whatever its terms are will govern the outcome of this storm in a teacup, but "use in speech production software" certainly seems to cover Siri.
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Apple turns to horde of Elvis impersonators for latest Group FaceTime ad
Well, I used to be disgusted.chasm said:My preferred Elvis is Costello rather than Presley, but this was a charming ad with a good choice of song, Elvis styles, and voices that still showed off the product without overselling it. Very well done, Apple.Now, I'm just amused.
But since their wings got rusted,
You know the angels want to wear my red shoes.
