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Comment by equalarrow | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. I have a few things wired in the house where they're actually close enough to a switch. But for phones and tables and laptops (we have several), wired is not an option.

This is also shitty news because I had very high confidence that an Apple router would not ship with any kind of malware or other crap I don't need. Now, I have to find something better, comparable in price, and works well with Mac household.. Sad face.

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It's important to note that wiring what you can makes the WiFi that much faster for everything else as well.

But when wifi is faster than 1Gbps, does it matter anymore? Obviously if you're talking servers and enterprise equipment, faster is better. But does my smart TV or iPad really need that extra little bit of speed? Netflix only streams as fast as my Internet connection, which is 60Mbps. I could have 15 devices on my network streaming Netflix each on their own dedicated Internet connection and still not saturate an 802.11ac router (theoretically).

You'll get 4K Netflix eventually. Plus, theoretical speeds, not actual. Plus you'd want to buffer quickly…

Good luck getting any range with 1GBS :-)

I don't know anyone who even approaches the theoretical speed of any 802.11 technology. Your neighbors on the same channel reduce your bandwidth, and neighbors on channels which overlap yours raise the noise floor a lot. I have a Moto X Pure and a Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC Lite, and I should theoretically get 867 mbit/s. I never even approach that in practice, even if I'm in the same room. There are more than 30 available networks nearby when I look on my phone. Even if I achieved the theoretical rate, the bandwidth falls off a cliff once you leave the room, as 5ghz signals are significantly attenuated by walls. I can max out my internet (75 mbit) if I'm in the same room as my AP, but I can't stream 1080p content on the 5ghz if I have 2 walls between me and my AP.

That being said, the Apple APs are the fastest consumer-grade APs out there. If you are going to hit the theoretical maximum, an Apple AP is your best bet. I don't think streaming is where people notice issues with their internet though. In my experience people tend to notice issues in video games, skype, facetime, and other applications where there isn't a buffer to hide issues with dropped packets first.

> I don't know anyone who even approaches the theoretical speed of any 802.11 technology.

I max out my cable modem's connection. I pay for 50mb/s, and 802.11n on a 5Ghz channel is more than sufficient.

At work however, yes, that gigabit wired ethernet connection is really nice. :)

My Airport Extreme hits 750-800 mbps pretty routinely, despite my devices being able to pick up about 10 other neighborhood wifi networks.

However, I get ~950 mbps over the wire (on a 1 gbps connection), so I still plug in when I'm sitting at my desk and need to transmit large files.

The new Google WiFi product uses the same secure boot procedure as Chromebook. I really like AirPort for it's simplicity, performance, and lack of a web stack. I think my new WiFi router(s) will be Google WiFi as they seem to have upped the bar on all those points.

I'm not thrilled about the autoupdate feature of Google WiFi. I wouldn't be surprised if it's leveraged to benefit Google's analytics, or for government snooping. But the greater risk at this point is from criminal hackers. And I prefer running my WiFi routers in bridging mode, anyhow, making it less likely Google will bother tracking my family's browsing from the LAN.

Maintaining my own homegrown router isn't appealing, though. For one thing, all the hardware available for that is sub-par. Solid support for MIMO and beamforming is mostly non-existent except for proprietary stacks; even simultaneous multi-channel is iffy using open source solutions. AirPort always shipped with better than average support for the latest tech, and I'm not keen on going backward in that regard, especially for what should be a performance upgrade.

> I wouldn't be surprised if it's leveraged to benefit Google's analytics, ...

https://support.google.com/wifi/answer/6246642 has a tl;dr version: "Importantly, the Google Wifi app and your Wifi points do not track the websites you visit or collect the content of any traffic on your network. However, your Wifi points does collect data such as Wi-Fi channel, signal strength, and device types that are relevant to optimize your Wi-Fi performance." and a full explanation of everything it does (or does not) collect, and why.

Which can be changed at any time.

> and works well with Mac household.. Sad face.

Apart from Apple's and Google's idiotic antics, what routers require anything more than a browser to configure?

I've seen a disturbing number of routers which have web interfaces that only work with old versions of IE.

Good luck configuring that with a mac....

Requiring a browser implies that the device has a full web stack on it, including one of Perl, PHP, or Node.js. That's the last thing I want on my WiFi router, or any router!

As annoying as it is for some, the configuration interface for Apple AirPort used a simple SNMP interface. Now, lots of SNMP software has had bugs and remote exploits, but all things being equal it's a much simpler interface to export and requires shipping less code, not least because it doesn't have to support a GUI, directly or indirectly.

That said, I always configure my WiFi router (AirPort or w'ever) in bridging mode and put them behind my gateway. And I try to disable any web GUI entirely if at all possible. People who use the built-in WiFi capabilities of their Cable or DSL modems are begging to be hacked.

> Requiring a browser implies that the device has a full web stack on it, including one of Perl, PHP, or Node.js.

Not really, CGI can be written in anything, shell scripting, C, whatever. But security-wise, it doesn't much matter the language because the programmers working on the web interfaces of such embedded devices rarely do a good job.

> That's the last thing I want on my WiFi router, or any router!

Considering the amount of crappy C most routers have, that's probably the least of your concerns.

I dunno. iTunes is close to malware in my book.

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