There are wireless routers, and then there are wireless routers with a 1.2GHz dual-core Marvel Armada SoC processor and 256MB RAM that supports USB 3.0 drive transfer speeds and has four massive antennae that can blow wireless connectivity through almost any environment. The $250 Linksys WRT1900AC (which you can win here) is the latter.
So what’s so special about this massive wireless router and why am I writing about it? Home and small office networking folks have never been given the chance to play with heavy iron. In between the run-of-the-mill wireless router and the $31,000 Cisco machine we find very few highly programmable, very powerful networking tools that allow for instant NAS setup, usable wireless management, and high speed connectivity. If I were setting up a network from scratch for a whole office and needed a backup solution, some parental controls, and some clever network mapping tools, this would be the router I’d use.
The first thing you notice about the router is its size. It has four removable antennae that hang off a case that is about ten inches long – far bigger than anything else I’ve seen. It is peppered with holes for heat displacement and even has a built-in fan for when things get too toasty. It can be mounted on a wall but is probably ideal for “top of the filing cabinet” placement in most environments. Wi-Fi range maxed out at about 300 feet and the system supports multiple Wi-Fi channels – 2.4 GHz 802.11n and 5 GHz 802.11ac – as well as dynamic beam forming to assess which antennae to activate for maximum throughput. The design hearkens back to an older, simpler Linksys trade dress that will remind geeks of some of their favorite mid-2000 era hardware.
In terms of performance I saw the best throughput when connected to the 5 GHz range. Degradation was negligible on the first floor of my brick home and speed was solid all the way up in my attic, about 30 feet above the router. In before/after speed tests against an Airport Base Station I saw equal theoretical speeds – about 13 Mbps but actual speed jumped from 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps. In short, it worked quite well.
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