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yaroldb · Sep 4, 2007, 12:45 PM

I thought I would share with my fellow Mac users. I was in Fry's this weekend and noticed that they had a sale on the Airlink N router. AR680W 300N Wireless Router to be exact. The final price was $30 after the mail in rebate and an in store rebate (I think the sale ends this week). This was the cheapest I've ever seen an N router even though I have never used Airlink and was a little scared. I spoke to the sales rep and he told me that the "N" feature would not work with the built in Airport in my Macbook or iMac. Both of my machines have the "N" Airport cards. He told me that Airlink uses it's own "N" technology. This made no sense to me because the box said "Draft N". I purchased the router determined to see if it would work. I get home, plug it in and it works. I looked at the settings and it was set to 802.11b/g/n mixed. I changed it to 802.11N only. Both Mac's picked it up with no problem. The range was better than my old Belkin router. The internet speeds did not really improve however in areas in my house where my connection was weak with the Belkin the Airlink was strong. I did transfer a 150mb file from my iMac to my Macbook and was blown away at how fast it transferred. Less than 20 seconds. Also, the router is white with chrome and matches my iMac nicely...

I could not find any reviews or information with this router and Apple, so I thought I would would share.

Check it out here...
Airlink101 : Products:ar680W

ghporter · Sep 4, 2007, 03:13 PM

What the guy at Fry's said is almost accurate. "Draft N" is not always the same thing from different vendors. Since it's a draft and not a finalized standard, manufacturers can pick and choose which features to include or exclude. Maybe you got lucky, and maybe Airlink products are very compatible. Or something else-with a draft, it's hard to say. Glad you got things working so well.

Senturus · Sep 9, 2007, 09:13 PM

I recently bought that airlink router and it seems to not work with my macbook pro... the wireless n that is... when i switch the router to N mode the internet doesn't work but when I go back to G mode it works. I already have wireless N enabled on my mac too.

yaroldb I guess you got lucky

Senturus · Sep 9, 2007, 10:34 PM

by the way... the wireless only works when my router doesn't have wireless security

WEP and WPA messes up the internet on my macbook pro.

ghporter · Sep 10, 2007, 06:50 AM

For clarification, Senturus, you're saying that "everything works fine" with G mode, including security, but N doesn't work when you turn on security? That sounds very much like a problem with the AirLink box, NOT your MBP.

Senturus · Sep 10, 2007, 11:31 AM

yea everything works fine with g mode, when i change it to mixed b/g/n mode the internet stops working.

mixed b/g/n mode or N mode alone works with all the 3 PCs in my house though (even with security or no security).

yaroldb · Sep 11, 2007, 10:39 AM

Odd,

I'll go home and try the to turn on the WEP. I normally do not turn it on. I leave it open and if people want to come in, they are welcome to. I check the logs on all the routers I have have never seen any other MAC address other than my computers. My network is all Apple computers so I did not think security was to much of a risk on my network. I'll let you guys know what I find.

Yarold

Senturus · 01:21 AM

Alright it somehow got fixed with the network diagnostic tool (safari had a button for it) everything works fine now. : ]

EDIT:

Nevermind it was working but the connection seems to be dropping? I'm fairly close to the router and I have about 70%+ signal too.

I guess I have to go back to using the wire... eh.

ginoledesma · Sep 13, 2007, 02:48 AM

I've had trouble in the past with D-Link and Netgear wireless routers with performance dropping when enabling WEP or WPA, and this was with the AP and the Mac client only a few feet away. Changing channels sometimes helped (since I'm in a neighborhood with lots of users on the same channel -- 6). You might also want to try upgrading the firmware if one is available.

Sherman Homan · Sep 13, 2007, 06:29 AM

Good info! I do want to point out that your internet transfer speeds are not likely to improve with a faster router. Your in-house speeds will, as you have seen, but it all comes to a crashing bottleneck when the router hits your internet modem. Even the old "b" speed routers are faster than most ISP services.