So since January I was under the assumption that all AC WIFI are created equal and I thought that the purchase of my Dlink AC1200 for $42 was a steal. Even on the Dlink dashboard it says that all my apple products were connected at high speed AC and when I tested my new AC speed test I was so disappointed and even posted a post that blasted the falseness of all AC routers. At peak I got 11MB/s which equates to about 88mbs which is just slightly faster than 56mbs single direction N speed.
When I posted, people kept asking me, how far away from the router were you? how many wifi signals were you running. I was 10 inches away from the router and was running only 1 wifi device although I live in an apartment where wifi signals run rampant and other users would say “ahh, that’s why”.
Recently I switched over to a new Shaw service which provided me with a 150mb service. The max speed of Shaw previously was 50mb/s so my Dlink Wifi was never maxed out as since AC wifi has a lot of a headroom or so I thought. When I tested out my new Shaw 150mb service through my Dlink AC1200, I got a disappointing max of 50mb/s again. of course when I switched over to wired ethernet, I saw a vast improvement of 150mbs straight away.
The last nail in the coffin for my Dlink router was for some reason my Dlink switch decided that everyone on my network should run at 100mb instead of gigabit because my Dlink router had 100mb ethernet ports and it was connected to the switch. When I bought it, I had thought everything was gigabit these days and so I had no idea that it had 100mbs ports hence the $42 sale price.
My suspicions grew that my AC1200 wifi was actually limited by the 100mb ports or perhaps it was just a bad router, but nevertheless my suspicions were aroused by all these problems.
I’ve been playing around with wifi security cameras these days as well as Apple’s homekit which controls all my lights within my house so my wifi network has grown to over 20 peripherals. I would attempt to record my wifi cameras while I’m away from home, but after several hours, the wifi would cut off. This problem could be my Dlink Router or the fact that it is still connected to the shaw router. Although I got a new Shaw Router, the fact remains that on my previous shaw router it would always disconnect my internet services throughout the day which in turn disconnects all my devices locally. The Dlink router had been moved from the dlink switch back to the Shaw router to separate it from everyone else because it took everyone down to 100mbs speeds when connected.
Thus… I decided to splurge on an Apple Airport Extreme. Yes, although I am an Apple Fan boy somewhat, I come from the PC world for decades and I hate the fact that everything Apple is over priced, which was the reason that I did buy the Dliink AC1200 router for $42 because I thought it would be equivalent to an Airport Extreme for $250 canadian.
I was wrong.
After plugging in the Airport Extreme, I picked up the little Apple pamphlet trying to read how to set it up, immediately the Airport extreme setup panel popped up on my MacBook without any app installation. I then filled in all my information which was basically I wanted to extend my home network and my new network name and password. The pop-up disappeared and that was it.
I disconnected my old Dlink AC1200 and connected my Macbook to my new Airport Extreme. Here are my test results through my new Airport Extreme.
After picking up my jaw from the floor, I double checked that my ethernet cable was indeed disconnected and that I everything was all WIFI, I am totally impressed. Remember that this speed is in MB/s which comes out to 490 mb/s writes and 203 mb/s reads. Don’t ask me why the reads are slower. This is also my first test.
I don’t know if I will sell my Dlink router on craigslist or I should simply run over it with my car but I have had it with Dlink.
So for all you Apple users out there, look into getting an Airport Extreme for your AC Wifi needs; no not the Airport express as that only supports dual-band N.
