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fully private click now to learn more the lyus wrt 54g router which links's
claims and I believe them is the top selling router of all time earned its
legendary status by being a solid piece of Hardware with great support from the
open source Community who built firmwares for it that performed better
were more stable and added features that especially at the time were only
available on expensive commercial grade routers now we have finally got its
spiritual successor the wrt 1900 AC in
our hands but making a video about it
right now puts me in a bit of an awkward position two months ago I could have
gotten on the hype train and said OMG lynxis is going back to their roots and
super powerful Hardware they're going to collaborate with the open source
Community it's going to be awesome and by two from now linkis might have
completely smoothed out their relationship with the makers of popular
thirdparty firmwares like open wrt and DDWRT and that message might be
completely valid again but right now is an in between stage where the hardware
is available but none of the big aftermarket firmware guys have announced
any kind of timeline for support for this router with most of the
communication from these communities being fairly critical of lynx's
collaborative efforts so far and their use of a Marvel Wireless chipset rather
than a more widely supported Broad chipset but there's good news if you ask
link sis there's a ton of work being done behind the scenes to get support
rolled out in a timely manner so stay tuned for the time being though all I
can say is what you're getting now when you buy what is one of the most
expensive consumer routers on the market
physically the unit is a real throwback to the old wrt series with a black and
blue look and stackable design that will look very familiar to fans of the old
WRT54G on the bottom we find T T of ventilation holes and rubber feet that
include wall mounting support a nice touch the front is mostly taken up by
the usual indicator LEDs for connectivity and activity on the sides
we find two of the four included antennas which are not internal or
permanently attached a baffling Trend that plagued us for a couple of years
and now thankfully seems to be going away so you can easily upgrade these if
you want moving around to the back we've got 5 GB Ethernet ports one of which is
designated for when a WPS button a power
switch a power in Jack a thankfully easy-to-reach Hardware reset button huge
thumbs up there and a couple of storage ports that appear to be labeled
similarly to Internal SATA connectors as ports 0 to three except that there are
only two of them further investigation reveals that the right one is a USB 2.0
/ EA combo Port labeled USB 1 and the
left one is a USB 3 super speed Port labeled USB 2 funnily enough for all the
marketing around Wireless speeds and all the cryptic labeling of these ports
these are actually one of the biggest differ differentiating points for this router and they're capable of throughput
in the 60 to 70 megab pers second range
on EA and USB 3 numbers that put this
router cleanly in the mix with dedicated Nas Hardware in terms of drive
performance finally on the back two more removable antennas bring our total to
four although it should be noted that the router supports three spatial
streams so only the most optimal of these three will function at any given
time finally on the top we find shiny prominent link branding I guess they're
happy to be out from under the Cisco umbrell and more ventilation holes over
a temperature controlled cooling fan that didn't even turn on throughout my
testing but will ramp up under extremely heavy load and the largest heat sink I
have ever seen on a router I mean seriously that is one big old hunk of
metal down there feature-wise things are a little bit light for a premium router
with no VPN support and fairly limited options in terms of Parental and
advanced Wireless controls but lynus does support both a wireless compet mode
and bridge mode although I wasn't able to test these since I've only got one of
these at the moment the software setup process is pretty straightforward
overall linkis includes a password on the Wi-Fi out of the box thank you by
the way and both their easy setup Wizard and advanced UI will be very familiar if
you've used any of ly's last couple of generation smart routers it's pretty
Snappy but a feature that I was sad to see missing from my older EA 4200
non-cloud connect router is the ability to apply almost all changes without
restarting the hardware that was freaking awesome for a trial and error
network configuration guy like me but I suspect for most people it's not really
that big of an issue now on to Performance well unfortunately I can't
replicate the assortment of routers used for comparative analysis and the
wellestablished test procedures that Tim Higgins at smallet builder.com used for
his review of this router which you should definitely check out by the way it's linked in the video description
what I can do is run it through the paces by testing both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
speeds on my delx P S2 with an upgraded
Intel 3160 AC wireless network card to give you guys an idea of how satisfying
the experience is overall the router was installed on one side of the main floor
of a three-story house and my four test locations were right next to it with no
obstructions about 10 ft away directly upstairs through the floor upstairs on
the other side of the house in the W showroom and finally through two
exterior walls in the garage where it's
really nice to have decent Wi-Fi connectivity for like if you're working
on a or something you want to have a movie to watch or whatever the case may
be for the measurements I used I perf with the following arguments which gave
me consistent results but I would definitely be open to suggestions about
how to improve our results in the future I'd also love to hear from you guys if
you'd like us to do more wiress networking videos we really haven't done
almost anything ever um and if we did
then we might have actually something to compare against in the future so post
your thoughts in the form I Linked In the video description if you'd like to see more of this category from us or if
you just can't be bothered so conclusion time the
WRT54G was revolutionary because it delivered stable and for the time very
powerful Hardware with a user flashable firmware it captured the hearts of the
modding and Enthusiast communities with a variety of thirdparty firmwares
available for it that enabled features that at the time could not be found in
rers at that price point and that's the
big gap I see in the new strategy the 54g was very competitively priced I mean
I mentioned the price twice just now which drove widespread adoption which if
there's anything I've learned about the open source Community it's that they
want their work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible which drove that open
source development that created a pretty amazing positive feedback loop as that
open source development drove more sales of the router and I think that's
something that without that inexpensive factor is going to be challenging for
something so expensive to achieve especially with competitors like the
ASUS RT ac68u and r7000 available for so
much less with similar performance albeit without the impressively beefy
build quality so that's where we sit right now is the wrt1900 AC a capable
platform that given adequate support could compete for your hard-earned money
the answer is yes but whatever linkis might wish it is going to have to re
earn that legendary status because their competitors have had over a decade to
catch up to the concept of great Hardware with support for open firmware
and there are plenty of other great options from moders many of which are
ready to go now and not waiting on future firmware changes so I want to
hear from you guys in the comments is it too little too late for the wrt 1900 AC
or do you think this is just the tip of the iceberg and lynxis is going to build
on what a little bird might have told me already is a very successful product H
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