Linksys WRT1900AC AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Router Review

[toor]

I agree, but he has merged yet another asus firmware further crippling the routers performance. If only he would add in needed features like picking what region you are in rather than EU or US only I may have picked up a 2ns AC68u rather than going to try a linksys WRT1900.

Seriously? thats your excuse?

Try a search took me all of 1 minute to find out how to manually change the country code for the asus routers.

nvram set wl0_country_code=US
nvram set wl_country_code=US
nvram set wl0_country=US
nvram set wl1_country=US
nvram set wl1_country_code=US
nvram set regulation_domain=US
nvram set regulation_domain_5G=US
nvram commit

 

[GoNz0]

Seriously? thats your excuse?

Try a search took me all of 1 minute to find out how to manually change the country code for the asus routers.

nvram set wl0_country_code=US
nvram set wl_country_code=US
nvram set wl0_country=US
nvram set wl1_country=US
nvram set wl1_country_code=US
nvram set regulation_domain=US
nvram set regulation_domain_5G=US
nvram commit

yeh serious, you have to edit and reflash the cfe to get those settings to take now.

Spend more than 1 minute before you throw random facts in next time.

 

[NETNewb]

WRT1900AC

Has the WRT1900 settled down? I thought quite a few people were getting random reboots, or has that been fixed?

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
To me it never happened.

 

[htismaqe]

Has the WRT1900 settled down? I thought quite a few people were getting random reboots, or has that been fixed?

The issue I had with reboots while in the GUI has been fixed, yes.

 

[Corgo77]

Problem with compatible hard disk.

eSATA and USB 3.0 results were about the same, both write and read. I am not surprised by this, since a lot depends on how good the drivers are. Also depends on what version of SATA is supported.

Update: Linksys says the eSATA port supports SATA II, i.e. 3 Gbps raw data rate. USB 3.0 is 5 Gbps raw data rate.

Hi Tim,

I would like to ask you about, how did you managed to get over the issue you had in the begining with the hard disk.
In the update you are mentioning:
"After further experimentation and consulting with Linksys, I discovered a badly formatted drive in the Startech dock was causing my previous failed attempts. "

I am having a problem with a 3TB WD Green drive (which supposed to be compatible with the router, as it appears on the tested proven to be working disks list.).

Which drive did you use in the end: 500 GB WD My Passport (WDBKXH5000ABK-01)?

Thanks for your help/support...

 

[thiggins]

Which drive did you use in the end: 500 GB WD My Passport (WDBKXH5000ABK-01)?

Described in the review:

Updated 4/15/14: After further experimentation and consulting with Linksys, I discovered a badly formatted drive in the Startech dock was causing my previous failed attempts. It looked ok to Windows' Storage Manager, but it reported an odd mix of filesystem types to the WRT1900AC. I swapped in another WD Velociraptor that did not have the problem and was able to run all tests, including eSATA. The tables have been updated with the new test results.

 

[Corgo77]

Described in the review:

Described in the review:

Ive just got confused, because of the lots of strikethrough words
So thanks for the clarification.
Your STARTECH dock has a JMicron - JMS551 ?

I currently have a 1TB USB 3 drive attached, and just want to be sure, to be able to use an other drive on the e-sata port, and obviously I do not want to waste 50 Euros on an enclosure if it is not compatible with the router, but up to now could not found a working/compatible enclosure/dock that would work with the router... Any suggestion? Linksys help desk does not know either.
(I already have a 3TB WD drive the same as metioned on their website (Western Digital WD30EZRX 3 TB (With Docking Station)), but I still have to figure out which dock/enclosure they have been using...

Thanks once again!

 

[htismaqe]

I have a Rosewill USB3/eSATA enclosure that I'm currently using with my NAS. I did use it with the router at one point but only via USB. If I get some time in the next couple of days, I could plug it into the router via eSATA and see if it works.

 

[Corgo77]

I have a Rosewill USB3/eSATA enclosure that I'm currently using with my NAS. I did use it with the router at one point but only via USB. If I get some time in the next couple of days, I could plug it into the router via eSATA and see if it works.

Thanks, that would be helpfull, because sofar I could plug two HDDs via USB only (1TB and a 500Gb), the esata just does not want to work (I can see the drive, but when I try to create a new share, the drive just goes into an infinite loop of clack, which is very weird.
Not to mention that I could not attach my 3TB drive yet, it seems I need an other enclosure.

 

[htismaqe]

It works.

I plugged the enclosure into the WR1900AC's eSATA port and created 3 shares. I accessed them via the admin account, uploaded a file and then deleted it successfully.

The enclosure is a Rosewill RX-358 and for the test I was using an old WD Caviar 200GB drive formatted FAT32.

 

[Corgo77]

It works.

I plugged the enclosure into the WR1900AC's eSATA port and created 3 shares. I accessed them via the admin account, uploaded a file and then deleted it successfully.

The enclosure is a Rosewill RX-358 and for the test I was using an old WD Caviar 200GB drive formatted FAT32.

Meanwhile I could also solve it, by using this page for debugging: http://192.168.1.1/sysinfo.cgi

And using a small free software called "MINI Partition Wizard Home Edition" to erase a small partition " Microsoft reserved partition" now the router detects my HDD, and running fine so far...

Now Linksys should include a Download manager like Asus did to their flagship routers, and I will be happy.

But really impressed by the router by now: the DLNA server is also running fine (I just don't understand since the DLNA server is there, how come they have not included a downloads manager yet ).

 

[htismaqe]

What details on the sysinfo.cgi page were helpful in solving the issue by chance?

I wonder if the router doesn't like multi-partition drives? The drive I used only had 1 partition on it.

Good catch!

 

[sfx2000]

What details on the sysinfo.cgi page were helpful in solving the issue by chance?

I wonder if the router doesn't like multi-partition drives? The drive I used only had 1 partition on it.

Good catch!

Since I don't have the WRT1900ac local any longer (shipped off to a family member) - one thing I had noticed with the older firmware is that it could mount a formatted driver, but didn't have the capability to format a drive - is this still the case?

 

[htismaqe]

Since I don't have the WRT1900ac local any longer (shipped off to a family member) - one thing I had noticed with the older firmware is that it could mount a formatted driver, but didn't have the capability to format a drive - is this still the case?

I don't see anywhere where it can format a bare drive. It needs to be formatted first.

I guess it's a double-edged sword. It supports a half dozen file systems (including HFS+) whereas like Netgear only supports EXT3 and NTFS.

 

[sfx2000]

I don't see anywhere where it can format a bare drive. It needs to be formatted first.

I guess it's a double-edged sword. It supports a half dozen file systems (including HFS+) whereas like Netgear only supports EXT3 and NTFS.

I thought it was a bit odd with the shipping WRT1900ac firmware and my experience with Linksys' earlier StorageLink apps - WRT610N, WRT160NL, and NSLU2 - one would think that the device could do a basic format and partition - if not NTFS, at least EXT3/4 and set the file perms correctly.

It's an odd omission, IMHO...

 

[Razor512]

Has anyone figured out a way to overclock the WRT1900ac? It would be interesting to see how much of an impact on the storage performance

If you can get openWRT running, can someone do a quick CPU benchmark to see if the speeds can be matched between the units.
(basically want to see how much of an impact that extra RAM has on storage performance)

It seems interesting if the pricing can be fixed (e.g., not stupidly overpriced).
In moving to a ac1900 router, I really did not get much benefit out of it in the long run. While the wireless performance is great, I still find myself connecting the laptop to Ethernet when I place it on a table in order to perform scheduled backups to my NAS. (802.11ac is quick, but painfully slow compared to gigabit Ethernet and performing system backups).

But the storage performance seems like it can be a good replacement for a budget NAS. I use a Phemon II x4 965 based PC as a NAS, in addition to a cheap single drive NAS for 24/7 use of hosting media for the HTPC.

 

[Irken Skoodge]

I was just wondering if this review will be updated for the V2 revision with new tests done.

 

[sfx2000]

I was just wondering if this review will be updated for the V2 revision with new tests done.

Probably not - v2 is a HW cost reduction of the V1, but community input has been positive on the v2's

 

[mountain_man]

Sorry to revive an old question but this is still perplexing me. Maybe someone can educate me.

I use an external drive attached via usb 3.0 to store my media. I transfer media to the drive from my laptop via 2.4ghz wifi. Then I play the media through Kodi on a Shield TV over 5ghz wifi. Wifi signal is always full bars from either WLAN device. Max speeds transferring files to to drive from my computer is 8 - 12 MB/s. Max read is 3-4MB/s. Kodi can't even play any files over SMB. They all just freeze about 6 seconds in. Kodi plays just fine over UPNP though. I can access the SMB from file apps on the Shield TV or from the computer, at the slow speeds listed.

To make things even more odd, when connected to the router via ethernet, I still max out at 3MB/s read speeds from the network storage.

In the reviews of the router on this site, I thought this thing got 60-75Mb/s write/read speeds to the drive over WLAN. I assumed read speeds would be close or even higher. Others on here have told me that I should get a NAS instead of the USB 3.0 HDD but on the Linksys forum there is another guy with a NAS connected to the USB 3.0 who gets the same performance as me... max 12MB/s write. He has 5ghz wifi on his computer. Also, per the review below it clearly states this should work fine in place of an NAS.

Then in this part of the review it shows throughput was approaching 1GB/s. I would think that the read/write speed would be the limiting factor, but in real life I see max 12MB/s write and 3-4MB/s read. The only time I can ever get anything close to 75MB/s write if wired connection.

Is there something I'm not understanding? Thanks so much!