Cisco-Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router
by Linksys
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router
Customer Review: Another great Linksys product
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a long time Linksys user and fan and this product hasn't changed my mind about their products. Feature by feature this router is worth it price but only if you will use those features.
Things you may be paying for and not using ...
1. The regular user with no game units connected to the Internet will never feel the different between this model and its $89 single band counterpart.
2. If you are not going to have an online UBS drive configured as a NAS device you will also be wasting money with this product.
Not so great on this product...
1. If you need distance between your router and your laptop workstation, stick to the models with external antennas. I had an older model with high gain antennas and it had double the range than this particular one.
Things that could be improved ......
2. I understand the people who write the router web interface and the people who wrote the Network Magic, the included software may have never met still a hole in the features. This router allows you to connect an external USB drive and share it as a network NAS object. This can be configured from the router's building admin web app. Included with the router is Network Magic which allows you to manage and configure the entire network...well almost everything. Network Magic allows you to configure and manage shared folders from the workstations in your network, but it doesn't know how to configure or even see the NAS device attached to the router.
Now, after all that...
5 stars! The installation wizard and configuration software allows network experts and non computer people a like to setup and configure the new router and your network.
5 stars! The read/write speed on the attached USB drive is twice as fast compared with Linksys older netshare device.
5 stars! The included network management software, "Network Magic", makes network management and monitoring easy and fun. I gave the network to my 13 years old to manage and now he thinks he is Cisco Certified. There is a very small learning curve to start doing remote tasks from your desktop to your network devices.
6 stars (if possible)! I no longer have to change networks or help other family members change networks when the Xbox goes online. We have our router connected to a 10mips pipe and there is no changes at all on our network while any of the machines are downloading heavy media. I configured the Xbox as a expanded windows media device, connected our Blue-Ray player to the router and added 3 laptop to our NAS device to access our media library...I still open my laptop and my email and VPNs to work connect and the traffic flows as if I was the only person in the house.
Customer Review: Fast and easy to setup
Summary: 4 Stars
Replaced a Linksys WRT350N with this unit, and so far no regrets...
Setup was fairly simple, although I'm not a fan of the Cisco/Linksys setup program that hides many of the advanced setup options from you. Would have been nice if they read the existing configuration off my Linksys device, and then carried all of the settings forward to the new one, but alas, they didn't think of that.
Instead, I plugged the router into my PC directly (having no other network connections present) and let the setup program configure all the defaults. Once that was done, I went into advanced setup by pointing my browser to the WRT610N, and manually changed what I wanted. Sounds involved, but it's really no different than anything else out there.
I was happy to see that the router worked flawlessly with the DDNS service from DynDNS.
The wired gigabit connection seems a bit faster than my previous router. The network speed test site I use consistently reports 8-10% higher speeds on the new configuration, and local file transfers between two computers on the router also seems about 10% faster.
On the wireless side, I'm getting a consistent 93 megabits on my 802.11N clients, up from 80 megabits on the WRT350N. Range of my 802.11N devices also seems somewhat better.
The 802.11N implementation seems to work with all of the devices I have, including a few Apple computers. Earlier 802.11N products have struggled with the Macs, but this one seems fine.
I use the storage link function with an inexpensive USB hard drive to host an FTP site on the Internet. Although poorly documented, there's a built-in FTP server in the WRT610N, and if you point the FTP port to the router, you get an instant FTP site that references whatever content you expose through the USB port. In conjunction with the DDNS service I use, this gives me a quick and simple way to access some of my data across the Internet.
One missing feature I'd love to see is the ability to run dual networks in parallel (that is, two SSIDs). Most of my computers are WPA2 capable, but I have a few older devices (printers) that only work on open networks. At the moment, this means I need two wireless access points - one for the 802.11N devices with WPA2 and one for the older devices. Would be nice if Cisco could give me a way to service both in one package.
The Cisco/Linksys "EasyLink Advisor" network management software is cute, but unfortunately very limited. If you're like me and have multiple networks and a broad mix of wired and wireless devices, you can do better.
Customer Review: Best I've used so far!
Summary: 4 Stars
*UPDATE*
Several more weeks without a problem. We have a winner!
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I hate to damn it with faint praise, but I've had such a painful, lousy experience with wireless routers that to finally found one that actually worked - really and truly worked - took me by surprise.
I've only had this for 2 weeks yet, but so far, I haven't had a single problem. It hasn't needed a reboot, I haven't had to tweak it, I haven't had weird disconnections... it's... just... worked. OMG!
Anyways, read my review of the Belkin N+ (Belkin Wireless N+ 802.11n Router (Black)) if you want to hear about some of what I've been through, but it hasn't been pretty. This is now the 4th (5th?) wireless router I've owned in my life, and this is literally the first that hasn't crashed at least once a week (yet) and that just worked, right off the bat. It's been fast, with a stable signal, and good range. I don't have any N devices, so I'm only using it as a G device, but it's great for that. And, I'm about due for a laptop upgrade, so when I get the new one I'll try it with N and see how it is and update this review.
There are some weird quirks. The web interface is a bit unintuitive - some things didn't appear where I expected them, and I still haven't noticed an option to have a non-broadcasting network name. It's not a big deal, but I like the (somewhat imaginary) security of not having the network name broadcast all over my neighborhood.
It ships with a very nice Windows GUI client for managing your network, Network Magic, but the constant prodding to upgrade makes up for whatever benefit it provides. If it wasn't for that and the free edition it ships with worked silently, I'd really quite like it - it detects what's on your network and builds a little network map, gives you debugging and diagnosis tools, etc. On an environment like a home Windows network, it can actually be handy to have that sort of thing.
I haven't specifically benchmarked the performance of the router - like I said, I don't even have an N device yet - but it has, subjectively, performed as well (if not better) than any other router I've owned. Like I said, range has been great, and the signal has been clear and stable.
Overall, I'm very happy. It's expensive for a home wireless router, but in this case, well worth the money! (My wife would vouch for that, she was about to strangle me over the last couple we've had.) Two thumbs up.
Customer Review: No use of 5 GHz and USB Connect for me
Summary: 3 Stars
I had purchased this router to upgrade from a Linksys Vonage wireless router (Wireless G). I was having trouble in streaming content over my network using a PS3. I also had a external 500GB hard drive (Iomega) which i thought would be cool to be able to connect to the router directly than connect to my PC and then share. I also purchased a Dlink DAP 1522 Accesspoint/ bridge to utilize the N speeds since PS3 has a G adapter and not N.
I had run some baseline tests on my network prior to changing the router.
My Wired LAN was providing me 51-56 Mbps (one PC to my laptop). Wireless from my PC to PS3 was between 3.4 to 3.2 Mbps (using Tversity). Internet d/l speed on my PS3 was 2 Mbps.
After getting the router i redid all the connections and followed instructions for installing the router (The s/w install on my XP PC took a very long time ~ 45 mins) but after that setup was a breeze. My DAP 1522 setup took time as I had to reset it twice becuase i kept on messing the Static IP settings.
KEY NOTES:
1. My PS3 is first floor about 20-25 ft away from my router which is on second floor. 5 GHz was poorer signal and SLOWER speed. I used 2.4 GHz and i got a 70% signal and BETTER throughput.
2. I ran new tests. PC to Laptop now averaged 64 Mbps (~12% improvement due to Gigabit). PC to PS3 about 19 Mbps. So, a substantial improvement. However, please note- PS3 gives DLNA and media server and protocol errors if you use any encryption on the wireless network. I had to use Mac address based authentication and use static IP to secure my network.
3. The speed of USB drive access is about 39 Mbps on a wired connection. If i connect it back to desktop PC, i get the same wired speed as i get for my PC (64 Mbps)
All in all, I feel that in my setup, I wasted money in paying for two features:
1. 5 Ghz- evidently it works very well on short distances but for longer distances, 2.4 is a better deal
2. USB connect - Not worth it. Loss in performance is too great. Also when using the web admin utility, it takes a long time to load up that page when the device is connected...very irritating.
Wirleless N - Boasts of 300 Mbps, but i got only 1/15th of it, however, a 6X improvement over the wireless G speed and solved my problem.
Please note that my setup is different from what you may have and results I have got may not be similar to what you should expect. I just wanted to share a guidance on how things actually change. For example 300 Mbps is really a myth and the reality for me is 20 Mbps!!!
Customer Review: Don't be forced into software!!!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
Pros: Well, I think this might of been a nice router. There are a few more features that I would of loved to had included, but it did have a nice range of features.
Cons: I am not an IT Pro, but I am an advanced User. I set-up this router manually and everything worked great. They provided software with it called "Network Magic". This is where the problem lies, and linksys should be severely punished for allowing this software to be there. I understand that most people do not want to know the ins and outs of connecting equipment. Thus the software works great for those people. It even has a nice user interface. But that is where it ends. It provides you with a 7 day free trial offer. Anyone who buys a wireless router should automatically expect to be able to connect a wireless laptop to a wireless printer with no hassle or worry. Unfortunately, if you install NETwork Magic, after the 7 day free trial, it will disable your printer. Linksys knows this as well because I called their help line to reconnect my printer after severe headaches before I grasped what the software was doing. Linksys help stated that I was attempting file and printer sharing and thus I had to buy the software to perform this task. I told them that was B.S., I should not have to purchase this software to perform such a basic task. They hung up on me!!!!!! I have a moderately advanced network going with multiple pieces of equipment. Thus, I would be forced to purchase the additional $50 software after paying $160 already for the hardware. This makes the router extremely expensive. I don't believe most people would know how to get around this. This software disabled the printer drivers, placed the printer offline, and messed with the port settings to render the printer useless. I had to remove all of the software for network magic and for my printer. I then had to reinstall the printer and manually enter in the new port before I could get my printer back onto the network. I might had actually considered the software before this went on. I will NOT be held hostage by ANY hardware or software that operates in this manner. Thus I am returning this router and going back to NETGEAR. I NEVER had these problems with my NETGEAR RANGEMAX router.
ADVICE: STAY AWAY FROM LINKSYS BY CISCO AS LONG AS THEY ATTEMPT TO HOLD PEOPLE HOSTAGE TO PURCHASING ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE TO MAKE THE PRODUCT PERFORM BASIC/STANDARD FUNCTIONS.