Anonymous
10/10/2013 7:41:47 AM
Tech Level: High
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
Verified Owner
5 out of 5 eggsFantastic bang-for-your-buck
Pros: -Power Efficient
-5 year warranty
-Great performance in the segment
-Able to Route LAN-WAN at nearly 200 Mbps
-PCAP traffic capture from WAN/LAN
Cons: -Single Antenna
-Only single SSID, No Guest SSID option
Other Thoughts: Good packaging, held securely in a recyclable cardboard tray.
Received hardware version 1.0R. Shipped with firmware version 1.00b31, updated and tested with 1.01b09.
The "load" used was iperf. Power measurements taken with a Kill-a-Watt
Excellent power usage/efficiency:
Idle (Wifi on): 1.6W
Load LAN-WAN (Wifi on): 2.0W
Load WLAN-WAN (Wifi on): 2.0W
Load WLAN-LAN and LAN-WAN (Wifi on): 2.2W
Idle (Wifi off): 1.1W
Load LAN-WAN (Wifi off): 1.6W
Routing: Iperf testing shows that this router is limited only by its 100 Mbps WAN port. Using two client and two server processes I was able to sustain just under symmetrical 100 Mbps speeds between LAN to WAN(~94.3 Mbps, just under 190 Mbps bi-directional). Refreshing Steam servers multiple times while playing Team Fortress 2 showed no impact and no issue with browsing on a different system. Ping times remained low throughout this as well. I measured the max simultaneous connections at 3973 - so likely this is around 4096 total connections. Overall this router offered impressive performance for its low-end price point.
Wireless: Wireless coverage is decent for a low-cost, single-antenna device. Performance is acceptable - iperf testing showed real world throughput of around 38 Mbps at a distance of a few feet - Windows showed a connection speed of 130 Mbps. Separating myself by about 2 stories I had much poorer signal, but could still browse the web and stream video without issue. Due to the crowded 2.4 MHz spectrum in my location I was unable to test 40 MHz channel widths.
GUI: The Web GUI is fast, simple, and intuitive. All the usual features found in modern routers are present. One very neat feature is the ability to capture packets from either the WAN and LAN interfaces. When you stop a capture, the packets can be downloaded in a standard Wireshark .pcap file. I'm not sure what the limit is as to how long you can capture for, but this is a valuable tool for debugging. No Guest wireless network option.
Other: Device is light, but has rubber feet to keep it sliding around. 5 year warranty is admirable, but I hope I never have to use it. Through all the testing/loading the max temperature reached was around 92F at the top of the enclosure (~77F ambient). Normal operating temp was much lower at around 80F. Never had to reboot or power-off the router.
Highly recommend for the light user or someone not needing the latest and greatest WiFi coverage. Fantastic bang-for-your-buck.
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