[Updated April 18, 2018 with lowered prices on Amazon. The RT2600ac is now available for less than an AirPort Extreme, with a lot more features and range.]
These days, many Apple users are looking to improve and update their home Wi-Fi connections. With Apple seemingly having abandoned any true hardware updates to their AirPort router line, Apple users are looking to third-parties to fill the gap for an AirPort Extreme replacement. To that end, Synology is among the cream of the crop in the standalone router market and provides many features never found in Apple’s offerings.
Mesh Wi-Fi is all the rage – and for many good reasons that our How-To-Buy Mesh Wi-Fi piece explains – but for folks with modest-sized homes and centrally-placed Internet entry points, having a single, standalone router still works quite well. With that, I’m often asked, “Which is the best standalone router?” and I almost universally answer: the Synology RT2600ac. With its coverage range, Apple-focused feature set, price point, and easy setup, it’s a no-brainer.
Time Machine
Being able to have a single Time Machine destination on your network is one of the reasons people buy Apple routers. Both Apple’s Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme support this, the latter by way of attaching a USB disk. The good news is that Synology’s Router Management web interface (SRM) supports this, as well. Just attach a USB disk, enable Time Machine support in SRM, and you’re good to go. All the users on your network can backup to this just like it was an Apple router.
AirPrint
One thing that Apple’s routers have curiously never supported is Apple’s own AirPrint technology, which affords users the ability to print to an attached printer from your iPhone. Many newer network printers support AirPrint out-of-the-box now, but even if you shared your USB printer from your Apple router, it still wouldn’t appear as an option from your iPhone or iPad. Synology’s SRM solves this, too, by allowing you to enable AirPrint (and Google Cloud Print) on any USB or network printer you have. Again, it’s as simple as enabling the option in the SRM web interface and assigning the appropriate driver.
VPN – Inbound and Out
The past few years have seen VPNs gain popularity, and for many good reasons. It’s convenient to be able to tunnel back into your network at home, and it’s also great to have a secure way to browse when you’re out on a public Wi-Fi network. Additionally, with the possibility of your home ISP sniffing your packets and selling your data to marketers, some folks want the option of connecting their entire home networks to a third-party VPN. Synology’s SRM software supports both of these use-cases.
Inbound VPN is managed by Synology’s excellent VPN Plus Server, a freely-installable “package” that Synology has built for SRM. From there you can set up one or more VPN options, including L2TP (natively supported on your Mac and iPhone), OpenVPN, and Synology’s own SSL VPN with which I’ve had great luck traversing even the most locked-down networks.
Cloud Station Server – Your Own Personal Dropbox
Many of us use Dropbox or iCloud Drive to store and sync our files, but generally that means both storing our data on someone else’s server (aka “the cloud”) and paying for that storage. Synology’s Cloud Station allows you to create your own, private cloud. You manage the storage, it’s accessible from anywhere (as long as your Internet connection is alive), and their Mac syncing app is elegant and simple.
Mobile App
Synology is a very Apple-user-friendly company, with countless mobile apps for all the different services you can run. DS Cloud and DS File can be used to connect to your Cloud Station files, and DS Router can be used to manage your router from anywhere.
For DS Router, Synology employed the same philosophy they used for their web interface: simple-and-elegant to start, but it goes as deep as you like. Their DS Router app lets you both tweak your router’s configuration and see reports no matter where you are.
Price
With an MSRP of US$239.99 the Synology RT2600ac can currently be found on Amazon for $194.99 (as of April 18, 2018). Its little brother, the RT1900ac, can be found for just $119.99. The RT2600ac is a dual-band, 4×4 router, whereas the RT1900ac is a dual-band, 3×3 router making either a perfect AirPort Extreme replacement. That extra antenna on each of the bands makes the range of the RT2600ac nearly double that of both its predecessor and the AirPort Extreme in our tests. For a single-floor apartment the RT1900ac can likely handle the job quite well for you, and both Synology routers use the same SRM software so you get all the same options regardless of which you choose.
Synology Router’s Other Features – Your AirPort Extreme Replacement
It would be unreasonable to dig into each and every feature available in SRM. Like the DiskStation Manager (DSM) upon which SRM is based, there are many, many layers, far too many to cover at once. Some of the additional features include: Smart Connect/Band Steering, Single SSID for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, support for multiple simultaneous Internet Connections, IPv6, Port Forwarding/Triggering, Guest Network, DHCP Reservations (for both IPv4 and IPv6), customized IPTV support, Parental Controls, full-on Intrusion Prevention, Advanced Traffic Monitor with Reporting, service-and-device-specific customizable firewall, and a DLNA server to act as a hub for your movies and music. You can learn all about these direct from Synology, where they provide videos to explain some of the more esoteric features.
Too bad these things are ugly as sin. They don’t really fit in design wise. The wife would never stand for one of these sitting in the study. Most non-Apple Wi-Fi routers look awful.
One feature of the Airport Express is the ability connect a speaker, and stream your iTunes Music to it. Using the Remote app on iOS devices, you maintain control of which Playlists you play, and you can control each Airport Express speaker.
Can’t do this with an Airport Extreme/Time Capsule, but it works great with the Airport Express.
“Smoke on your pipe, and put that in.” said Anita to Bernardo.
It is true that John was pushing the benefits of AirPort with back to my mac way too far, it is true that Apple’s personal cloud abilities are unique to that same back to my mac interface. Placing your AppleID or ID’s into your Airport allows all of those users to access the attached storage as if it is another back to my mac disk. So after the discussion about routers I was left a bit cold about what I would get if I ditched my 4 year old network setup of 2 time capsules and 2 airport express’s (for range extension and music streaming). All devices are GB hard wired to my main TimeCapsule.
So except for the fact that my expresses are only n (but that has been fine for airplay and wifi access in those corners of the house). What would would replacing my primary TimeCapsule buy me? This is an 802.11ac tri-band, tri-stream? router. That auto configures the other three devices on my network and are using a GB wired back haul. (which is better than mesh right?)
Except for the VPN (which is cool but not sure I’d bother) and AirPrint (which my printers are capable of) what would I get in performance? I know my hardware is coming up on 5 years old but one reason there have been no updates on the AirPort Extreme is simply because we haven’t seen a major networking change (short of mesh).
I still have hopes that apple didn’t kill off it’s Airport routers and instead moved them into the iOS team so that the next AirPort router will be running iOS. This would easily enable mesh, Potentially add AirPlay II and allow Apple to use it’s A series chips to power things. I will admit that if this is apple’s plan they should speak up before more people jump ship but the bottom line is what do I get on a modern router vs my current gen Airport setup?
Thanks for the info. My AirPort is humming along fine for the moment but at some point is’s going to expire and I’ll need to find a replacement. Synology has a good reputation.
In all seriousness I would not be at all surprised to find that AirPorts and Time Capsules have disappeared from the AppleStore when it comes back up after the big show on Tuesday. Just now I checked and they have done bloody well everything possible to hide the AirPorts. No links, no section, you have to search for AirPort by name to find them at all. Next step oblivion.
Well Alf, I’d first like to point out how far and deep my foot has found it’s way into one of my orafices. You and Dave have pooped out and forgotten more than I’m going to learn in this lifetime time on this topic so I defer with this tiny exculpatory explanation.
For whatever reason, putting in the Apple ID/pass on the Apple router makes not just the local router drive on the time capsule visible when I’m traveling, but also my back/macs on my network. And when I update my appleID password and not on the router, I don’t see any machines. So I thought that was a “feature” but apparent it should work without that. But I’m not alone, 2 other friends have it work the same way.
Regardless, I’m wrong, you guys are right. Why it works for me as is, is a mystery and I’ll leave it at that. 😀
We disagree Dave. A feature of back to my mac is I put my iTunes pass in the router and it automatically makes all my home machines available for file sharing and screen control wherever I am.
Effectively saying, let me set my router to port forward everything through some ports, or screw it, let’s just forward everything through a totally open DMV is not an equivalent. Sure, if I do that I can access some, not all it’s features, but that is NOT the product. It’s like saying cloud station works automatically wherever I go because they provide an automatic routing service, but then you take that away and you have to deal with manual port forwarding. That ain’t cloud station. Part of its feature set is letting me do that automatically without hassle. That’s why I got it. If I have to bother to do port forwarding to make it work, I’d get something else.
This isn’t really a matter of opinion, though. Seriously, just try this with a non-Apple router. Enable BTTM in your mac’s iCloud preferences and… voila. You’re in. The port forwarding is literally the same regardless of router brand. It opens up the ports required to create an IPSec connection direct to your Mac, and then the two Macs negotiate from there.
@Alf
Well no. “It” namely back to my mac feature, cannot be done. Sure, you can get some approximation of the features offered by “back to my Mac” by doing crazy tedious annoying port opening (which increases security vulnerabilities) and forwarding, but that is what it is, and it’s a feature trying to ape “back to my Mac” it is not back to my mac. Back to my Mack also throws in integrated screen share control for example. No doubt you can get some other engineered solution or app to help there. But it ain’t back to my mac.
@John Kheit: Alf is 100% correct here. Back to My Mac is not router-dependent. As long as the router supports UPnP or NAT-PMP (for auto-port-forwarding) them BTTM will simply “work” behind any router. To be clear, even behind Apple’s routers, NAT-PMP auto-port-forwarding is how it’s done.
The one thing that’s not supported, for clarity, is that only Apple routers support sharing their own drives via BTTM, too, and Synology doesn’t support that.
But sharing your Mac’s drives, sharing your screen, all of that via BTTM – That works fine behind any router and is not router-dependent.
All that said: BTTM commanders port 500 to make all its magic work (regardless of router), so if you enable BTTM do note that any router services requiring port 500 (like an L2TP/IPSec VPN) will NOT work.
Great review Dave, and I have been eying this just in case. But one thing it does not do that Apple routers do is “Back to my Mac” connection which makes the Airport (and any drive on it) as well as your home macs come up under your shared tab even when you’re away from home, just as if you were home.
I’m not only clutching on to my Apple router, I’m thinking of buying an extra or 2 just in case it dies.
The extra range isn’t doing much for most as it so overwhelms a place it probably creates a ton of interference, and although the extra bandwidth is nice, I’m not sure it overwhelms the “we control the whole widget” experience of the Apple Gear.
Frankly, people need to yell at Apple to get off their lazy bums and update their wireless gear. It works if enough people complain. it did for their standalone screens and it can for the routers. Heck, if they are too busy picking what plants should adorn Apple stores, maybe buy Synology and have them make a home hub that is router, NAS, and perhaps home IT agent. But there is no excuse for a company this size to be so lazy and/or incompetent that they can’t put out updates to such home essential products.
@John Kheit
Back to My Mac only requires UPnP on the router for devices inside the network to map ports to the external IP.
For the router itself, either a static or dynamic DNS pointing to the public IP address would allow you to connect, it’s not as convenient or automatic as the BTTM setup but it can be done.