Which is better: Airport Extreme or D-Link Dir-855 Xtreme N Duo?

Hi,
I'm planning on buying a wireless router in the next couple of days but I'm not sure which of the two would be best for my needs. Can anyone help me out with your thought about their features?

I plan on using it to support with 2 PC laptops and a MBP.

Thanks,
Summer2000

There are two big difference between the two. One, the Airport Extreme lets you add an external hard drive and printer via the USB port. Two, the Airport Extreme costs more.

It ultimately boils down to the USB port. If you don't see yourself using it, then go for the DIR-655. I have the D-Link router and it's been great with FAR more devices than you plan on having.

Thanks for replying.

But I wanted a comparison between the Airport and the new DIR-855 model not the older DIR-655.

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=548

The Dlink has a webinterface you can access with any computer, that is an advantage I think. At least for me that have both Mac, Linux and Windows computers in my home.

The Airport can be extended by the use of Airport Express units, and looks a lot better.

Better depends on what you're looking for.

You want to compare a new $360 router against the "older" $180 one?

OK, At $360 for the DIR-855, it is not worth the money unless you will be using it for it's intended purpose. That is, streaming HD content on the 5 Ghz band to your TV's throughout the house, while simultaneously using the 2.4 Ghz band on multiple PC's.

Your original post also said "best for my needs". When you start asking this, many knowledgeable hardware folks will disregard the initial items you asked about and steer you to a better comparison, and that is the Extreme vs the 655. And for this, Kash is quite correct in recommending the DIR-655 available pretty much anywhere for $115-120. It's a top notch router. It will support network printer vs USB printer. Which is really best for you boils down to, do you have a USB printer or a network printer.

I have a USB printer which I plan to share with all 3 laptops.

In that case, between these two, would prob go with the Extreme. That way you can connect the printer to the router via USB and all computers have access to the printer without worrying about whether someone else's machine is running or not.

Thanks bobtomay for your advice.

Looks like I'll be going for the Airport Extreme. I'll also save $20 from the Apple Store with my student discount.

I have the dir-655.
Works great with my computer.
What ever you do, do not go for a linksys router. They are hardly compatible with macs.

NPuter said:

I have the dir-655.
Works great with my computer.
What ever you do, do not go for a linksys router. They are hardly compatible with macs.

Click to expand...

Cheez... I got my new iMac Saturday and once I unpacked, throughly examined every inch and then powered it up, the first thing it almost did was ask me if I'd like to use the LinkSys network! I think it was actually easier to connect with the Mac than my PCs. My LinkSys is a Wireless-G Cable Gateway. And I started off wireless, but eventually plugged in a network cable yesterday and shut the wireless radio off. I'm not moving anything around so why not?

Now, I don't know if it's got anything to do with LinkSys, but my LinkSys wired print server is connected to the router and it has been flawless in windows... but getting it to work with my iMac is taking a toll on my poor old brain. I'm concluding that Apple Marketing/R&D really doesn't care much about other brands of routers, switches, or print servers and especially parallel-cabled printers that are connected to a non-apple print server. I suspect apple doesn't have drivers for non USB printers or non-USB printers that are running through a print server. I have to figure out the Gimp-Print Guten-whatever stuff and see if I can jury-rig some sort of work-around so I can use my two printers and not have to buy two new ones and an airport to boot.

Same here, before I upgraded to the DIR-655, I had a Linksys WRT-54G and it worked flawlessly with my Macs and PCs.

Using both a Linksys and a DIR-655 here.
Keep the D-link set up as an 'n' only router for my Mac's.
Have the Linksys set up as 'g' for my PS3, but it does work on my Mac's.

And while you shouldn't have an issue with any router that meets the standards, NPuter is partially correct as far as Linksys goes. And that is, if you do have a problem with it, their tech support refuses to support Mac's. Even had one of their supervisors tell me that Linksys routers don't work with Mac's. This was less than a year ago. Due to this, I no longer recommend them to any newcomers to networking.

summer2000 said:

I have a USB printer which I plan to share with all 3 laptops.

Click to expand...

What model of printer is it? Be aware that some printers do not play nicely with OS X when networked. Manufacturers often build their drivers to work solely when connected locally because Apple's support for port redirection is non-existent (a major weakness in Mac OS X, IMO).

bobtomay said:

Using both a Linksys and a DIR-655 here.
And while you shouldn't have an issue with any router that meets the standards, NPuter is partially correct as far as Linksys goes. And that is, if you do have a problem with it, their tech support refuses to support Mac's. Even had one of their supervisors tell me that Linksys routers don't work with Mac's. This was less than a year ago. Due to this, I no longer recommend them to any newcomers to networking.

Click to expand...

Bob... Maybe they're waking up to the fact that Apple's market share has doubled in the past year or so (still no threat), because we were on with them for the better part of an hour and the guy is emailing me a transcript of the session. He _even_ gave me two apple-related links:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article....t+up+wireless+printing+via+the+Linksys+WPS54G

http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6664

He got me to the point where I could print a test page from the print server using the LinkSys utility, but we couldn't get a email or web page to print, and he suggested that it was the non-standard apple print drivers... not the hardware. If you know anything about the gimp-print drivers, please share that with me.;D

drgrafix said:

He got me to the point where I could print a test page from the print server using the LinkSys utility, but we couldn't get a email or web page to print, and he suggested that it was the non-standard apple print drivers... not the hardware. If you know anything about the gimp-print drivers, please share that with me.;D

Click to expand...

With apologies in advance for being slightly OT.... your tech was absolutely right - 3rd party printer drivers on Mac OS X generally don't allow the printer to be attached using any other means than the USB port. They are designed specifically to connect to USB.

Windows gets around this by allowing you to dynamically redirect the port. So the driver doesn't care how the printer is physically attached, it just follows the OS's lead and sends the traffic wherever the OS points. OS X doesn't do this (at all). Fortunately, the Gutenprint/CUPS/GIMP-PRINT drivers, which have been included in OS X since 10.3, are network capable. But that assumes that the open source community has designed a driver that works with your printer. The first step on finding a compatible driver (assuming there's not an exact match in the list), is to look out on this website. Once you're able to determine a compatible driver, you just manually switch over. But be aware that some special functionality (like paper handling, advanced print modes, etc) will be unavailable.

With that said, I've yet to hear a complaint from anyone running a networked printer through the AirPort Extreme. I don't know what kind of special magic Apple does with their hardware and/or software in that case, but it seems to work around the problem somehow. Either that, or everyone on this board who have tried it have been lucky enough to have a printer that has an associated Gutenprint driver.

It was my hope that Apple would address this major deficit in Leopard, but it still appears to be a problem. Let's hope they don't turn a blind eye to it again for the next version.

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