Quote:
Originally Posted by FlameOn
You do not necessarily need dual band at all. 5GHz really doesn't help with range all that much because its attenuated much more easily by walls and concrete... 5Ghz tends to work well when you have highly congested 2.4Ghz... and unless you live in an apartment where you are surrounded by routers, microwaves and phones. Not really necessary but a nice to have for future-proofing... Simultaneous dual band in that case as you don't want to limit yourself to have to use 5GHz in all places and spend money on adapters.
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As someone who lives in a large building downtown, I'd argue that the future is here and 5Ghz is a necessity now. From my living room my laptop can pick up 30 different wireless networks, all operating in the 2.4Ghz zone - no to mention all the cordless phone signals and the cell towers 100 ft from my balcony. My router was constantly fighting interference until I flipped it into 5Ghz.
I use my Airport Extreme in 5Ghz mode and dug out my old D-Link POS to operate in 2.4Ghz for our cellphones to connect to (why the hell doesn't the iPhone 4 support 5 Ghz... stupid Apple).
Airport Extreme is solid - haven't had any issues with it, certainly not like the D-Link router I had before. But then it cost a lot so I was expecting it to be solid. I've heard great things about Buffalo + DD-WRT, but that's largely for the "power user" crowd that likes to fiddle with things - if you just want to plug a router in and have it work out of the box, can't go wrong with the Airport Extreme.
I added an external HDD to the router via the USB port and then ran some command to tell my Laptop how to backup over the network. Works like a charm. Just can take a while if you're backing up a lot over the Wireless connection.