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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
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. -
Apple to enable new iPhone eSIMs via software update, iPhone XS boasts faster wireless cha...
Sprint, not AT&T, was the carrier that locked the Apple SIM to itself once selected. AT&T is bad, but Sprint is worse about unlocking anything.plovell said:I wonder if Apple has an iron-clad commitment from AT&T that it will NOT lock the eSIM if ever used on AT&T. That was the problem with the "Apple SIM" in the iPad but at least you could remove and replace it. With eSIM that's not possible. I think Apple needs to make a statement regarding the ability, or otherwise, of a carrier to lock an eSIM.
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Here are the vehicles and receivers with Apple CarPlay announced in 2018 & 2019
Apple supports four resolutions for CarPlay at this time.tzeshan said:Do you notice that one important number is missing in all the CarPly available cars? There is no screen resolution specified. This is counter high-tech standard that Apple is very good at. For one thing, I like to know if the screens are all retina display like the iPads? Or maybe the screen resolution is fixed for CarPlay?
800x480
960x540
1280x720
1920x720.
The screens are NOT retina display. Remember, you have to deal with CarPlay units that are as cheap as 300 USD retail up to the ones that are over 1000. Some have touch resistive screens, not capacitive sense. Even on units that have a 9 inch display, you're still getting a relatively low resolution display, just bigger pixels and bigger touch targets. This is down to cost. Manufacturers pick low bidders.
Apple says, "minimum screen size is 6 inches. If you (a manufacturer) have a non-standard resolution, contact them."
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Lumen.me promises to help you lose weight with your iPhone
What Dror explained to me is that calorie restriction with exercise is an oversimplification of understanding metabolism, and it's why people who are doing that may plateau, and have a harder time continuing to lose weight after initially losing more easily.SpamSandwich said:Calorie restriction combined with exercise is the only thing proven to work in every case. It's not complicated. If buying this device encourages people to do either of those two things, it's a win.What the device does is understand whether you're burning fat calories or burning carbohydrates, and then uses that information to tell you information about what kind of meals you should have in order to promote fat burning, and what kinds of exercise will help you the most based on where your metabolism is at.
That is, it takes what you're suggesting, and then goes further.
