Airport extreme showing its age, Looking at replacement

[urbanracer34]

I have an old Airport Extreme that has been the main routing workhorse for my family and myself.

It is starting to show its age.

It appears to be dropping wireless network connections. I caught it on both my iPhone and MacBook Pro going from my "5G"hz network to my regular non Ghz network.

It's time to put it to pasture. It no longer gets software updates and it has served us well.

I am coming into some money soon and aiming to work on a solution.

We have 300/175 fiber and we game a lot (many new consoles but some old,) we torrent a lot, and we surf a lot. The router must be able to keep up.

I was thinking of a Protectli appliance with OPNsense and a Unifi access point.

https://www.amazon.ca/Firewall-Appliance-Gigabit-Celeron-AES-NI/dp/B07FKMJGD6

Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite Wi-Fi 6 Access Point - Wireless Access Points - Memory Express Inc.

www.memoryexpress.com

What does the community think?

 

[DadEyeMoody]

Will most of your connections be wireless? Would be beneficial to run hardline to a lot of the devices.

I am mid switch to OPNsense now, leaving Unifi behind me. I grabbed a Lenovo m920q (720 is just as good for this, but 920 I got was the deal to be had), added a 4 port Intel NIC (on eBay I got the riser and the "buffer" to fill out the case), and purchased some used Ruckus R610 APs. They're much better than the Unifi AP. Probably getting the HP 1910 switch to complete it out.

The Lenovo is way more powerful than any Protectli box, and came in cheaper than I could have snagged their cheapest box.

Good luck!

 

[coxhaus]

I just ordered a couple of Cisco 150ax wireless APs for my home network. They are only $105 each. They are very easy to setup and you can create 1 virtual AP as the controller is built-in.

And free firmware updates for the life of the product.
Maximum number of associated wireless clients: 200 per Wi-Fi radio, for a total of 400 clients per access point, or 1000 in a system.
Cisco Business 3-year limited hardware warranty