Linksys WRT1900AC Wireless Router Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,650 words · ~8 min read
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Hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer more secure and
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fully private click now to learn more the lyus wrt 54g router which links's
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claims and I believe them is the top selling router of all time earned its
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legendary status by being a solid piece of Hardware with great support from the
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open source Community who built firmwares for it that performed better
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were more stable and added features that especially at the time were only
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available on expensive commercial grade routers now we have finally got its
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spiritual successor the wrt 1900 AC in
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our hands but making a video about it
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right now puts me in a bit of an awkward position two months ago I could have
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gotten on the hype train and said OMG lynxis is going back to their roots and
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super powerful Hardware they're going to collaborate with the open source
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Community it's going to be awesome and by two from now linkis might have
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completely smoothed out their relationship with the makers of popular
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thirdparty firmwares like open wrt and DDWRT and that message might be
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completely valid again but right now is an in between stage where the hardware
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is available but none of the big aftermarket firmware guys have announced
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any kind of timeline for support for this router with most of the
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communication from these communities being fairly critical of lynx's
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collaborative efforts so far and their use of a Marvel Wireless chipset rather
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than a more widely supported Broad chipset but there's good news if you ask
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link sis there's a ton of work being done behind the scenes to get support
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rolled out in a timely manner so stay tuned for the time being though all I
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can say is what you're getting now when you buy what is one of the most
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expensive consumer routers on the market
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physically the unit is a real throwback to the old wrt series with a black and
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blue look and stackable design that will look very familiar to fans of the old
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WRT54G on the bottom we find T T of ventilation holes and rubber feet that
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include wall mounting support a nice touch the front is mostly taken up by
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the usual indicator LEDs for connectivity and activity on the sides
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we find two of the four included antennas which are not internal or
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permanently attached a baffling Trend that plagued us for a couple of years
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and now thankfully seems to be going away so you can easily upgrade these if
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you want moving around to the back we've got 5 GB Ethernet ports one of which is
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designated for when a WPS button a power
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switch a power in Jack a thankfully easy-to-reach Hardware reset button huge
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thumbs up there and a couple of storage ports that appear to be labeled
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similarly to Internal SATA connectors as ports 0 to three except that there are
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only two of them further investigation reveals that the right one is a USB 2.0
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/ EA combo Port labeled USB 1 and the
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left one is a USB 3 super speed Port labeled USB 2 funnily enough for all the
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marketing around Wireless speeds and all the cryptic labeling of these ports
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these are actually one of the biggest differ differentiating points for this router and they're capable of throughput
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in the 60 to 70 megab pers second range
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on EA and USB 3 numbers that put this
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router cleanly in the mix with dedicated Nas Hardware in terms of drive
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performance finally on the back two more removable antennas bring our total to
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four although it should be noted that the router supports three spatial
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streams so only the most optimal of these three will function at any given
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time finally on the top we find shiny prominent link branding I guess they're
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happy to be out from under the Cisco umbrell and more ventilation holes over
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a temperature controlled cooling fan that didn't even turn on throughout my
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testing but will ramp up under extremely heavy load and the largest heat sink I
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have ever seen on a router I mean seriously that is one big old hunk of
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metal down there feature-wise things are a little bit light for a premium router
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with no VPN support and fairly limited options in terms of Parental and
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advanced Wireless controls but lynus does support both a wireless compet mode
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and bridge mode although I wasn't able to test these since I've only got one of
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these at the moment the software setup process is pretty straightforward
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overall linkis includes a password on the Wi-Fi out of the box thank you by
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the way and both their easy setup Wizard and advanced UI will be very familiar if
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you've used any of ly's last couple of generation smart routers it's pretty
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Snappy but a feature that I was sad to see missing from my older EA 4200
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non-cloud connect router is the ability to apply almost all changes without
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restarting the hardware that was freaking awesome for a trial and error
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network configuration guy like me but I suspect for most people it's not really
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that big of an issue now on to Performance well unfortunately I can't
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replicate the assortment of routers used for comparative analysis and the
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wellestablished test procedures that Tim Higgins at smallet builder.com used for
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his review of this router which you should definitely check out by the way it's linked in the video description
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what I can do is run it through the paces by testing both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
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speeds on my delx P S2 with an upgraded
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Intel 3160 AC wireless network card to give you guys an idea of how satisfying
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the experience is overall the router was installed on one side of the main floor
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of a three-story house and my four test locations were right next to it with no
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obstructions about 10 ft away directly upstairs through the floor upstairs on
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the other side of the house in the W showroom and finally through two
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exterior walls in the garage where it's
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really nice to have decent Wi-Fi connectivity for like if you're working
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on a or something you want to have a movie to watch or whatever the case may
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be for the measurements I used I perf with the following arguments which gave
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me consistent results but I would definitely be open to suggestions about
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how to improve our results in the future I'd also love to hear from you guys if
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you'd like us to do more wiress networking videos we really haven't done
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almost anything ever um and if we did
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then we might have actually something to compare against in the future so post
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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
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you just can't be bothered so conclusion time the
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WRT54G was revolutionary because it delivered stable and for the time very
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powerful Hardware with a user flashable firmware it captured the hearts of the
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modding and Enthusiast communities with a variety of thirdparty firmwares
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available for it that enabled features that at the time could not be found in
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rers at that price point and that's the
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big gap I see in the new strategy the 54g was very competitively priced I mean
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I mentioned the price twice just now which drove widespread adoption which if
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there's anything I've learned about the open source Community it's that they
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want their work to be enjoyed by as many people as possible which drove that open
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source development that created a pretty amazing positive feedback loop as that
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open source development drove more sales of the router and I think that's
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something that without that inexpensive factor is going to be challenging for
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something so expensive to achieve especially with competitors like the
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ASUS RT ac68u and r7000 available for so
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much less with similar performance albeit without the impressively beefy
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build quality so that's where we sit right now is the wrt1900 AC a capable
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platform that given adequate support could compete for your hard-earned money
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the answer is yes but whatever linkis might wish it is going to have to re
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earn that legendary status because their competitors have had over a decade to
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catch up to the concept of great Hardware with support for open firmware
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and there are plenty of other great options from moders many of which are
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ready to go now and not waiting on future firmware changes so I want to
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hear from you guys in the comments is it too little too late for the wrt 1900 AC
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or do you think this is just the tip of the iceberg and lynxis is going to build
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on what a little bird might have told me already is a very successful product H
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anyway guys thank you very much for watching my team and I worked hard on this video we hope you enjoyed it if you
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did please like and sh share it if you didn't please dislike it and leave a
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all these are good things and again thanks for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe to line This Tech
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