Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router Reviewed

[Unregistered]

WRT610N Problems

I had a few problems with I first purchase the unit. It would drop the connection multiple times a day. I contacted Tech Support (online chat with what seemed line a foreign entity) but actually they were pretty good and asked if I had a Wireless house phone near the unit. I did and they suggested that I move it and that in conjunction with a reboot of the router seemed to clear the problem. FYI I have one laptop that is wireless N at 5GHZ and approx 3 other 2.4 GHZ devices wireless 802.11g and life is good now )

 

[Unregistered]

If someone don't use encryption at all and for security only use the MAC numbers of every devices then less chance of noticing those problems then?

 

[geo]

Sigh. I was considering the WRT610N as the "safe" choice for quality dual-band wireless .n router. But now that I've reviewed the Amazon and Newegg comments, I think there isn't one anymore. Unless one wants to dig up a discontinued WRT600N from an increasing small number of sources.

5GHz .n seems to be a very iffy proposition in general up to now. Some of this may be down to users not understanding that they are inherently going to get less range with 5GHz than 2.4GHz. . . .but not all, I think. Repeatedly dropped connections when signal strength is 60%+ really can't be put down to a lack of user education.

 

[Unregistered]

wrt610 works great

The problem with this router is that when it works great, nobody posts a comment. Mine works fine with both bands. I am trying to improve the connection even more which is why I am reading all these comments. Both bands work great for me. I have 2 xboxes, 1 xbox360, and a laptop all connected wireless. Both bands are connecting at 60% and up in a 2 story house. One problem I had in th ebegining is that I inputed the wrong password for WAP. This caused my connections to connect and discconect. I think this occurs to a lot of people that have posted bad reviews.

 

[thiggins]

The problem with this router is that when it works great, nobody posts a comment.

That's true for pretty much every other product, too.
Thanks, however, for the report.

 

[rogerbinns]

I think this occurs to a lot of people that have posted bad reviews.

It also depends on what you use the device for. In your case all machines are accessing the Internet. Standard DSL is 1.5Mbps while cable and some providers have DSL up to 6Mbps. That latter is just over half the speed of wireless B. I saw no issues with this router at those speeds. It is only once you are doing internal transfers between machines that problems arose since at that point you are trying to use the maximum wireless bandwidth available (all the way up to an alleged 300Mbps for dual channel N). (Note that doing internal media server is also at the same speeds as an external internet connection).

I don't think any manufacturer releases products that are fundamentally flawed in their core functionality when used in a simple manner - everyone would notice. What they do compete on is the edges - higher speeds (that most don't use), pages of extra settings that you'd be hard pressed to tell if they aren't exactly working right etc. Given the technology, time and price constraints they will naturally want to cut corners. Notice how rarely device limits are published (eg maximum throughputs for wired, concurrent connections etc). For the vast majority of customers they will get away with it, but for some they won't

 

[geo]

While a relatively overwhelming amount of griping may be the typical pattern for tech forums, it's not nearly so prevalent a phenomenon at places like Amazon and Newegg that cater to a much wider base that has a higher percentage of customers who have been trained in the value to the community of providing both good and bad feedback. And the relative comments there gave me some pause.

 

[Unregistered]

Speeding up wrt610n

I found my internet connection increased by 50% when I disabled WMM Qos

 

[Daniel]

Firmware version: v1.00.00.18 (2008/08/27)

- Resolved the wireless reset issue during MAC address filtering configuration.
- Updated wireless drivers to improve overall wireless performance.


Anything to say?

 

[thiggins]

I found my internet connection increased by 50% when I disabled WMM Qos

I have seen this mentioned before and tried it, but it had no effect.

 

[thiggins]

- Resolved the wireless reset issue during MAC address filtering configuration.
- Updated wireless drivers to improve overall wireless performance.

Nope. Linksys requires us to return product, so we no longer have the WRT610N to retest.

 

[Carnagerover]

Has anyone done any testing yet with the newly released firmware to see if there are any improvments ?

Also what issue was the WMM causing ?

 

[Sumsolstice]

Yet another with WRT610N dropped connections

I bought one last week, replacing a perfectly good WRT52 rev2, so I could do Wireless N to my media center extender, and have G for most everything else.

I took the first router back after losing most of my sanity trying ro eliminate dropped wireless connections. The second one doesn't seem to be much better. TechSupport chat had me go from b17 to b18 FW (that didn't help). They had me dink with the default channels and bandwidth - to no avail. I've seen problems with various notebooks, a HP Touchsmart desktop, the MC Extender, and a nokia internet tablet. I'm firmly convinced that this thing is jinxed. Tempted to plug back in the WRT54 and get a cheap N router to add to it.

-Dale (silicon valley area)

 

[TriHFH]

Problems

I bought one last week, replacing a perfectly good WRT52 rev2, so I could do Wireless N to my media center extender, and have G for most everything else.

I took the first router back after losing most of my sanity trying ro eliminate dropped wireless connections. The second one doesn't seem to be much better. TechSupport chat had me go from b17 to b18 FW (that didn't help). They had me dink with the default channels and bandwidth - to no avail. I've seen problems with various notebooks, a HP Touchsmart desktop, the MC Extender, and a nokia internet tablet. I'm firmly convinced that this thing is jinxed. Tempted to plug back in the WRT54 and get a cheap N router to add to it.

-Dale (silicon valley area)

I experienced the same problems. I saw a few posts of users having these problems before I made the purchase, and now I wish I had taken them more seriously.

I bought the WRT610N from Fry's about two weeks ago. When I first set it up, I thought it worked flawlessly... I had no problems streaming 1080p uncompressed h.264 HD streams over the 5GHz channel. Then last week, I experienced my first connection dropout while simultaneously streaming HD and uploading photos to a fileserver (all over the 5GHz radio).

Anyways, since having those problems I've upgraded to the latest B18 firmware, done a factory reset, and multiple power-cycles. I did some stress testing to try and see if I could re-create the problem over and over. I basically setup a large 50GB file transfer over wireless that utilized ~112Mbps of 5GHz wireless bandwidth (the max I seem to be able to get with my current setup). After about 20 minutes the router completely stopped responding... Both wireless radio's went down, and even the gigabit switching stopped working as computers on my LAN ceased to function. The only way to resolve the problem was with a power-cycle. Upon repeating the process directly after power-cycling, the problem quickly happened again. I came to a conclusion that the high-usage of the 5GHz radio was causing the router to overheat.

Anyways, I tried a myriad of different settings and the only "fix" I found was to completely disable the 2.4GHz radio. Once I did this, I was able to stream the 50GB over wireless without any hitches.

It'd be nice if someone could do some more testing... to verify that the problem is really with overheating. If someone opened up the router and blew a fan over the internals while doing a stress-test, it'd be interesting to see if the connection drop problem persisted. (I just don't want to void my warranty, or else I would do it myself ).

 

[geo]

I have seen this mentioned before and tried it, but it had no effect.

I wish he'd said what his client was, because now I'm beginning to suspect that is an artifact of Intel 4965AGN rather than WMM. . . .because I had the same issue with Netgear WNDR3300 and Intel client with the WMM setting.

Either that or its some funky part of the .n spec that is unknown (but I doubt it).

 

[SpooZ]

Here is how i fixed the wireless issues.


/wireless/basic wireless settings/
Set both 2,4 and 5GHz Radio Band: Wide 40MHz channel.

And the most important I belive is to set

Applications & Gaming/Qos

WMM Support: Disabled

Hope this helps

 

[geo]

What's your client adaptor hardware?

 

[dcronshaw]

Overheating problem also

I experienced the same problems. I saw a few posts of users having these problems before I made the purchase, and now I wish I had taken them more seriously. (snip)

I also had the same problem with dropping connections but on the 2.4 GHz radio. The first week or so it worked fine. Today, I had 2 people playing a game, WOW, and another one surfing the web on the 2.4 GHz radio (WPA TKIP) while I was surfing on the 5 GHz radio (WPA2 AES). They kept complaining they were losing their wireless connection but I was fine. It got so bad no one could connect. I tried upgrading from B17 to B18 firmware and the problem still existed. I power cycled the router and noticed it was pretty hot. I also think the problem is due to overheating. I have Comcast 16MB speed. The gamers connected to the neighbors wireless and 30 minutes later I noticed the router was working fine for myself and the 2.4 GHz surfer. I also noticed the router was not as hot. I think I will return mine before my 30 day return policy is up at Best Buy. Maybe dd-wrt can come out with a firmware that fixes it or Linksys will add some more heat sinks (v1.1?). If so I'll buy another one. I swapped the WRT610n for the old trusty WRT54GS w/ dd-wrt firmware and have no problems. The kids are playing WOW again w/ no issues and I'm not get yelled at any longer. Its like major PMS when the internet is down in my house!

 

[SpooZ]

What's your client adaptor hardware?

Currently i have these thingies to the network

Running on 2.4GHz

Siemens Gigaset W75 WLAN IP Phone
2 pc's on Netgear WG111T
Atheros AR5007EG
Nintendo Wii

Running on 5GHz

Intel 3945ABG
XBOX 360 Wireless adapter

But next week i will get
2 Intel 4965AGN, to replace Intel and Atheros cards.
1 ZYXEL NWD210N, to replace 1 of the Netgear cards. (Testing if it will work well.)
2 New Asus EE 900 Pc's to make the router work some more.

Wil get back if it fails.

 

[TriHFH]

Running Stable

Well, since my last post, I've finally gotten my WRT610N stable with both radios on.

Basically, I took apart the router, and installed slim-profile heat sinks on the metal shields that covered the hottest chips, using Arctic Silver Alumina Adhesive.

Then I got a 120mm fan and mounted it to a base that the router sits upon. The fan effectively forces fresh air through the holes in the bottom of the router and out of the top vents.

The router doesn't even feel warm to the touch anymore, even when I'm fully utilizing both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios. In fact, I ran a test last night, where I transferred 100GB on the 5GHz radio, 50GB on the 2.4GHz, and 180GB on the GigE switch, all simultaneously. I woke up this morning, and all transfers had been completed without any drops after multiple hours.

So I've effectively "fixed" my router's connection drops... At the expense of getting my hands dirty and voiding the warranty on an expensive piece of hardware .