So I couldn't get over the fact that the Netgear was half the price of anything else, so today I decommissioned our DGND3300 and installed the newer DGND3700.

Under relatively ideal circumstances, sitting ten feet, and one wall, from the router and copying a large file from my MacBook Air to a desktop MacPro, I observed 52.5 megabits/sec on 2.4GHz and 107 megabits/sec on 5GHz. Moving downstairs, but near the stairs, I observed 28.5 megabits/sec on 2.4GHz and 13.9 megabits/sec on 5GHz. From a slightly different vantage point downstairs, away from the stairwell, the performance collapsed. 5GHz was unreachable and I got only 1.97 megabits/sec at 2.4GHz.

I don't have performance numbers from my earlier DGND3300, but it definitely did better than this. Still, I'm going to keep the new router. Hopefully it will have better heat management than the earlier ones, and I like having a GigE backbone. All I need is a second AP.

My home theater rack has a wire running upstairs to the closet and a vanilla Ethernet switch in it for all the gear. My current plan is to convert that switch into an AP+switch combo to fill in the signal-strength gap. That had me doing a bunch of research today on APs that also have a four-port switch in them. (I'm out of plugs on my power strip, so I really want to have a single-box solution.) Here's the list.

http://www.amazon.com/Amped-Wireless-Wireless-300N-Access-AP300/dp/B0058X0TFA/
http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Universal-Range-Extender-WN2000RPT/dp/B003VWZE7S/
http://www.amazon.com/AirLink-AP671W-300Mbps-802-11n-Wireless/dp/B003MB01HQ/
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-Wi-Fi-Booster-Smart-DAP-1525/dp/B0053XG25G/

The Amped box is notable for supporting Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). The NetGear and AirLink are basically just cheap. The D-Link, a successor to the earlier DAP-1522, is new and very impressive. It's got a 6-way antenna and can do beam steering. Unfortunately, it's way too tall to fit in my rack, unless I want to cut some holes. Which is tempting. But not today. (Sadness: go read the Amazon reviews. See how difficult it is for people to understand the distinction between an AP and a "range extender"? This is why most vendors don't even bother to try to sell these things.)

Finally, I ended up buying one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-N12-Wireless-N-Advance-Router/dp/B002SQ9ZX2/

It's a full-blown router, but it has a switch on the back to turn it into an AP, which isn't supported by any other routers I've seen. Furthermore, Asus seems to explicitly market their routers as being supported by 3rd-party firmware, like DD-WRT. The installation process seems to be a world of annoyance, as you can only do it from a Windows box, but it is supported. For $40, it's hard to go too far wrong. (Cleverness: by putting the AP/relay/router switch on the back, Asus gets to ship one box that can serve three different market needs. There may be some hope for us, yet.)