Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router Reviewed

[Daniel]

Really? I'm curious what LinkSys would have to say...

- I mean are they aware of this already?
- What will all currently sold units?
- Are they currently shipping units with a better heatsink?

 

[thiggins]

Really? I'm curious what LinkSys would have to say...

- I mean are they aware of this already?
- What will all currently sold units?
- Are they currently shipping units with a better heatsink?

I have asked Linksys about this and so far, have heard nothing definite back.

There are no other versions out with any "fixes", heatsinks or otherwise.

 

[Daniel]

I have asked Linksys about this and so far, have heard nothing definite back.

There are no other versions out with any "fixes", heatsinks or otherwise.

Sent this link to the online chat support. I knew that person would never have heard of possible heat issue when both band are on intensive use but I asked to forward the engineers and hopefully they would think it is interesting enough to test it.

I'm sure you have a better contact inside than all of us.

Let's wait and see...

 

[russelsm]

My disconnect problems seem to be fixed...

I've been having so many disconnect problems with my 610, that I was just about ready to throw it in the trash. The primary reason I bought the 610 was to enable higher speed access to my NAS, but the connection would always drop as soon as I attempted any sustained data transfer. I've been following this thread, as well the Linksys.com forum, looking for a solution. Last night I read about the over heating issues, and I didn't want to void my warranty, so I just sat my router on a couple of small blocks in an effort to improve the air circulation to the router. I also contacted Linksys online chat to ask for a solution, and they suggested changing the following Advanced Wireless settings:

Beacon Interval = 50.
RTS Threshold = 2304.
Fragmentation Threshold = 2304.​

Having made these changes, everything's been working fine, and the problem hasn't reoccured at all, and I've been getting data transfer rates of about 10MB/sec to my NAS. I don't know which of these changes actually helped, so I'm going to leave the configuration as it is for now and see if the problems reoccur.

BTW, my network has 2 clients with Intel 4965AGN wireless cards on 5GHz, and a Brother 2170W wireless printer and a couple of other PCs on 2.4GHz.

-Mark.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the report, Mark. I don't know why they had you futz with those settings. I think the cooling improvement did the trick.

Evidence seems to be pointing toward heat-related issues with the product. The "UFO" design rules out standing the product up vertically, which would improve natural convection.

BTW, how long after powering on the router would it take to show problems and what sort of load was it under?

 

[dcronshaw]

Update, no disconnects so far

After making a few changes to my router config on my WRT610n, I have not been disconnected. I've tested it offline Sunday with it not connected to the internet but connected to a 1 TB ext. usb drive. With my previous settings, after copying a couple mb using 2 notebooks to the USB drive I would get disconnected on the 5 GHz radio. One notebook is using 5 GHz Intel 4965abgn card and one is using 2.4GHz Intel 3945abg, After changing the following, I have not been disconnected. Under Wireless, Wireless Security tab, 5 GHz, I changed the Encryption from "WPA-TKIP or WPA2-AES" to "AES". I am using WPA2-Personal AES for my notebook w/ Intel 4965abgn card. The other notebook is using WPA TKIP on the 2.4 GHz radio with the Intel 3945abg. I also connected it back to the internet Monday with a third computer playing WOW. Below are my current settings using the B18 firmware:

Under Wireless, Basic Wireless Settings
5 GHz
Network Mode - Wireless-N Only (Intel 4965abgn ver 12.0.0.82 driver)
Radio Band - Wide - 40MHz Channel
Wide Channel - 46
Standard Channel - 48 - 5.240GHz (wanted to stay away from my 5.8 GHz cordless phones)
SSID Broadcast - Disabled

2.4 GHz
Network Mode - Mixed (have a Linksys PCI N card that only does 2.4 GHz)
Radio Band - Wide - 40Mhz Channel
Wide Channel - 3
Standard Channel - 1 - 2.412 GHz (used this on my WRT54GS w/ DD-WRT)
SSID Broadcast - Disabled

Under Wireless, Wireless Security tab,
5 GHz WPA2-Personal
Encryption 'AES'

2.4GHz WPA-Personal
Encryption TKIP

Wireless, Advanced Wireless Settings
Took all defaults except changed both 'CTS Protection Mode' to disabled (dd-wrt did this on my WRT54GS)

Applications & Gaming
Changed WMM Support to Disabled
Also disabled Internet Access Priority (it was on for my VOIP)

Mac Filtering is turned on under Wireless for extra security

Drew

 

[russelsm]

Thanks for the report, Mark. I don't know why they had you futz with those settings. I think the cooling improvement did the trick.

Evidence seems to be pointing toward heat-related issues with the product. The "UFO" design rules out standing the product up vertically, which would improve natural convection.

BTW, how long after powering on the router would it take to show problems and what sort of load was it under?

The router's on all the time so I haven't noticed how long after powering on it start to show problems - It just has problems all the time. It's generally used pretty lightly for web surfing by the 2 laptops with 4965AGN wireless cards on 5GHz draft N. It would frequently drop the connection when surfing, and was guanteed to drop the connection when doing any kind of data transfer to my NAS.

Yesterday I mentioned that I set the router on a couple of blocks (my son's wooden building blocks) to improve air circulation around the router, and changed some advanced wireless settings and I no longer had any dropped connections, but I wasn't sure what it was that helped. Today, whilest I was at work my son took his blocks away and put the router back directly on the shelf, and all the problems returned. When I retuned home I turned the router off for a while to let it cool down and set it back on the blocks and it's working fine again. I've been using it all evening, and have transferred a couple of gigabyes to my NAS without a single dropped connection. It really does look like all of these issues are heat related, so it will be interesting to see how Linksys will respond.

-Mark.

 

[Daniel]

You may also want to add this on the Linksys forum here. I created that thread after reading that cooling the unit helped here and there. If more user jump in and also say the cooling helped then we have a good clue.

 

[thiggins]

The router's on all the time so I haven't noticed how long after powering on it start to show problems ...

Thanks for the additional info.

When the wireless connection drops, is the router still connected to the Internet? In other words, is the problem just the wireless connections disconnecting from the router or is the router disconnecting from the Internet?

 

[wfiveash]

Anyone know if this will work to provide Time Machine Compat NAS?

My DL-4300 router WiFi appears to have died recently so I'm looking for a new WiFi router. I was wondering if the NAS capability of the Linksys 610N is compat with OS X's Time Machine? Also, anyone know what network filesharing protocols are supported (NFS, CIFS, etc...)?

 

[ReD-BaRoN]

After reading the review, I should get the 600?

Hi,

Great site and reviews.

After reading this article, it sounds like I should be looking for the 600, which has higher throughput in both directions, while being more consistent with the throughput.

Am I missing something?

Thanks!

 

[ReD-BaRoN]

So, I shoud buy the 600?

After reading the review, it seems like I should be looking for a 600, given the better max throughput, and more consistent throughput. Am I missing something?

Thanks!

 

[Sumsolstice]

Working Better, but not happy with why

I have it working stable now - but the reasons for this concern me.

First, after updating to B18 - it wasn't stable, so I reset to factory defaults (wiping out what the Linksys online tech had me do). I played with restricting 5GHZ to N, to limiting the second transceiver to 2.4GHz - that didn't seem to help.

However, changing both radios to using WPA2 and AES - seems to have stabled it out. The other day - I had an old laptop that I couldn't get working with AES, so I turned that off and went back to WEP / fixed key. At that point, the thing started with the connect/disconnect stuff. It was a bit better when I turned off all security, but it would still disconnect. I set it back to WPA2 personal and AES for all the newer devices, and its all working fine. Too weird. I haven't seen anything that would suggest this is a heat problem.

-Dale

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)

 

[popper]

its the internal CPU then!

You don't want to run a mix of draft 11n and 11g clients on the same radio. The throughput for both will suffer.

Try using only 11g devices on the 2.4GHz radio and connect your 11n notebooks to the 5GHz radio.

Also use WPA2 on any radio that is running 11n. Using WEP or WPA/TKIP will knock down your throughput by 50%.

that just brings to a head the points iv always said, the CPU.SOC they use in these things are just to slow and give no overhead for continuous throughput.

why dont they just start using some current "E300" and the far better "E600" PPC based CPU SOC in a new design and you will have FAR MORE processing power to take care of all this and perhaps even get to make far better use of the wireless spectrum.

the E300 and E600 PPC SOC is FAR more powerful than the current router CPUs and are running at something like 4watts under FULL load and thats with a full motherboard chipset that routers will not need (see Efika datasheet http://www.powerdeveloper.org/ )

come to that are there ANY PPC SOC based wireless Units in the end user/consumer space and if so can you get hold of some and review them

 

[gocchin]

Same thing with my 610... was totally unstable, constantly dropping connection in 5ghz but restricting 5ghz to N and 2.4ghz to G and using only WPA2 and AES, I've been stable for a week!

I have it working stable now - but the reasons for this concern me.

First, after updating to B18 - it wasn't stable, so I reset to factory defaults (wiping out what the Linksys online tech had me do). I played with restricting 5GHZ to N, to limiting the second transceiver to 2.4GHz - that didn't seem to help.

However, changing both radios to using WPA2 and AES - seems to have stabled it out. The other day - I had an old laptop that I couldn't get working with AES, so I turned that off and went back to WEP / fixed key. At that point, the thing started with the connect/disconnect stuff. It was a bit better when I turned off all security, but it would still disconnect. I set it back to WPA2 personal and AES for all the newer devices, and its all working fine. Too weird. I haven't seen anything that would suggest this is a heat problem.

-Dale

 

[rpwoodman]

Does this router allow static IP addresses to be added to DNS?

My Linksys WAH354G router has nothing to allow a machine with a static IP address to be accessible (via DNS) to other machines on the network, other than by editing the hosts file on each machine, which is obviously a bit of a bind.
Some machines will have static IP addresses due to port forwarding for things like BitTorrent (and I've not seen a router yet that allows port forwarding to a machine name rather than an IP address), and if I get a NAS box, I'd probably want that to have a static IP address.

thanks

 

[Unregistered]

router

Just noting my problems with linksys WRT600N router. I have two of them. The power adapter lasted three days on the first one. The second lasted 4 1/2 months. It is a 120v/12v 2amp adapter. The build dates are 3/08. This seems to be an adapter no one makes except for linksys. Either less than 2amp or more than 2 amp. I thought of trying a 2.5 amp so maybe it would hold up better. I can't find any blogs on this problem or any fixes. I am still WAITING after jumping through many hoops to get linksys to sell me new ones because they DON'T warranty anything you buy on ebay even if it's sealed NIB. They say someone could have taken it apart and damaged it. Nice way to not stand behind a product.Like no one ever got bad products from a physical store. Luckily I have a G band back up router I use. So my warning is to be careful about relying on this router only. The fiasco of telephone calls to linksys once you get through to someone that knows anything and speaks english cleary enough is ended with taking your phone number and the sales department will call whenever they are not OVERLOADED to take your order on a secure line. Imagine that, their main lines are not secure. I hope this is useful to some else.

 

[Unregistered]

Wired Gigabit speeds slow

Tim,

Have you tested LAN to LAN wired speeds on this router?

I'm very disappointed with the wired Gigabit speed on this WRT610N router. I've got three high end Gigabit capable computers connected to the router via the wired interfaces and the best speed I can get is from any system to another is 38% of Gigabit maximum (~46 MBytes/s). I've tried numerous protocols (SMB, FTP, SSH) all with about the same results. This must be some hardware limit of the router. All cables are quality CAT6.

I realize you may not have this router anymore, but if you could add wired LAN to LAN speeds in your future tests that would be very valuable as well.

TIA,
Vidmo

 

[thiggins]

Have you tested LAN to LAN wired speeds on this router?

I don't test LAN to LAN speed because testing a switch chip is more a test of the computers involved than the chip itself.

If you are getting low speed between gigabit clients, the problem is in the computers, NICS, or OS (or a combination), not the router.

Try taking the router out of the loop and just connect two machines with static IPs via a CAT6 cable.

 

[rogerbinns]

the best speed I can get is from any system to another is 38% of Gigabit maximum (~46 MBytes/s). I've tried numerous protocols (SMB, FTP, SSH) all with about the same results.

SMB and FTP are disk limited. You didn't say what you did over SSH but if it was SCP then that is disk limited too, and SSH also consumes more CPU to do the encryption/decryption.

The standard tool for measuring network throughput is iperf.