I got my new/replacement N900 7xgb version in today and it came pre-loaded with firmware 1.03.11. I am going to leave it at that for now and run some tests to see if it’s stable. Should those pass, I will update the firmware and re-run the tests and let those who read this thread know my results.
Time will tell, but so far so good. This new router is MUCH cooler than the last under load and doesn’t have my laptop cooler pad under it. I did leave it propped up on the cd though to not mush my luck too far yet. Transfer rates to the usb hdd are down to almost half of what they were before, 24MBps now, but that seems more in line with what others have reported. I will rerun my 200GB copy test again after I update the firmware to the latest.
I did notice that the open source download for the firmware went from 484MB (1.05.12) down to 376MB (1.06.18)? Not that I mind a more well coded source but 20% savings is pretty hefty unless it was all from removing pseudo code. I hope to be able to get some time this weekend to look into the source code.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=1703&sid=179&lang=en
I have updated my firmware to the latest, and now the internal 2TB drive is not showing up again!!! **bleep**! Why does this stuff just not work? Is this not even tested?
I am thinking this second unit is going back to amazon as well. I just can’t beileve it really just doesn’t work. Also, while copying 175gb from my work PC to this device at home over the internet, it cept failing, finally loosing connection and not working again.
Not happy with WD at all on this one.
Erik
I still haven’t had time to look into the source code due to work being busy, but my replacement router took 3 weeks and 1 day to lockup using the 1.03.11 firmware it came with. The only two things I have noticed with 1.03.11 is that the USB attached hard drive speed tops out at 24mbps and that my friends PS3 suffers from a LOT of stuttering even though it shows a green link. And yes, after he complained I set a prioritization rule to highest for his PS3’s local IP for both TCP and UDP and it didn’t seem to change anything for his PS3 but it did make the rest of my network stream wifi much slower.
Hi,
Just to let you know that WD just released version 1.06.28 of it’s Firmware.
Still not allow me to get access to the content of the USB Storage using SMB, but that’s not a real problem to me now… I’ve worked out something else.
But for me, one issue solved : I kept getting internet connection drops. Those seem to have vanished.
Now, let’s wait to see how reliable this is over several days… and if it is reliable, this would be a major improvement !
Regards.
NetPenguin
I’ve got my N900 last week. It came with some old firmware, which I did update online to the latest and greatest 1.06.28. The router did replace an ancient Linksys WRT54GC that had been running trouble-free for years, but was lacking GB-Ethernet and 7 ports of that, too.
Long story short, today suddenly my brother wasn’t able to access the network with his wireless notebook. Turned out it wasn’t able to get a DHCP lease, while wired computers were still able to access the LAN and internet. The router would respond to “ping” over the LAN, but wouldn’t deliver the config page. Power-cycling did restore full functionality, but that’s not what I want to do regularly with a brand-new router and central point of the IT infrastructure!
I’ve bought the router to replace the old one and an ethernet switch with just one device. Currently, none of the fancy functions are activated. It’s simply working as router for the internet (modem connected to WAN port) and as WLAN access point, but most of the time only wired devices are in use. Room temperature is approx. 21°C (50°F), the outside of the router is warm, but the largest temperature I’ve been able to find with a little IR heat sensing device was less than 35°C (90°F). I guess that means there’s no heat problem.
The thread title still applies: WD Tech, please reply and solve those stability issues!
Regards
Ektus.
I and others are having similar issues. May I suggest using firmware 1.05.12 and see if that works better.
You get it here at:
http://products.wdc.com/n900centralrollback/
I also am having trouble with 1.06.28. It will look like it is working fine but then suddenly it won’t work unless I reboot the router. But I have to do this constantly and so I decided to just roll back When I use 1.05.12, it is much more stable.
Please use 1.05.12 for now.
I’ll give the current version another chance before downgrading, and WD time to deliver a new version. As long as the reboot is “only” once a week, it’s quite time consuming to test and decide if the older version is really better. If it’s only wireless and DHCP that gets dropped, I can live with that for the time being. But I don’t want to live with it forever!
Regards
Ektus.
Hi,
Just a post to report that my N900 is now up and running trouble free for about 12 days.
The trouble-free applies to wired connections as to wireless connections.
EKTUS : I have had similar problems to the ones your report : router not delivering an IP address over DHCP to a wireless computer. But that was also BEFORE i bought my N900. The roblem was either the computer or the router my ISP provided… but the only that helped was to reboot the computer or at least to close a session and open another one. So the problem could be related to a router or to the computer… But I suspect the computer to be at fault as the ISP router could release DHCP addresses to other devices and because it is unbelievably reliable (I reboot it about 3 or 4 times a year… and half of the reboots are just to apply a FW upgrade !).
So, now my only problem is that USB ports sharing feature that is not working as expected for me. This feature offers three problems :
-
problem 1 : the hard drive connected does not appear with it’s given name. It appears under the model # of the hard drive, which is not really convenient. It also mounts a 220Mb large partition that cannot be written.
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problem 2 : I cannot share the content of a USB attached hard drive with my SMB enabled Blu-Ray player (an Oppo BDP-105). According to Oppo, this is probably related with the SMB version that is used by WD, which is either old or a custom one.
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problem 3 : if I connect 2 external hard drives using a USB Hub, only one drive shows up.
SUGGESTIONS TO WD :
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concerning problem 1 : to allow the user from within the user interface, to assign a specific name to a hard drive. Synology allows to do that on it’s devices. I guess WD should be able to do that also.
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concerning problem 2 : if possible, upgrade to the “genuine” latest version of SMB. Problem : if I got it right the implementation of an old version is due to some licensing restrictions…
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concerning problem 3 : I suspect that this is a hardware limit, but as there are 2 USB ports, I guess I could live with that for a while. If the problem can be circumvented, I would find that quite useful.
Regards.
NetPenguin
I have just purchased and installed an N600 device, also updated it to the latest firmware, 1.04.16.
I was trying to connect an external USB storage device and I found a serious issue:
It appearch that the N600 does NOT support exFat formatted devices.
FAT, FAT32 and NTFS formatted drives work. You’re certainly aware of the limitations of FAT and FAT32 in terms supported size and max. number of directory entries. NTFS has never been developed for using it on external flash drives either. It is also difficult to work with NTFS filesystems from OS X.
exFAT has been around for a 5-6 years now and was introduced by Microsoft to address the limitattions of FAT and FAT32.
I am very surprised that WD did not consider supporting it, although it widely supported (among others by both Microsoft and Apple)
SUMMARY
=========
* The list of supported filesystems on external usb storage devices is MISSING from the product specification.
* exFAT formatted usb external devices SEEM NOT to work with N600
Thanks
That’s a bummer, how about using HFS+? That’s what I have my drive formatted to, but then again I primarily use Mac.
Only case-INsensitive mode is supported, that complicates things a little as my mac’s hard drive is case-SEnsintive and I use the external drive for other purposes as well. Anyway, thanks for the hint!
P.S. Dear WD, exFat support is STILL WELCOME!
You are SOOOOO lucky if you only have to reset once a week. My N900 has to be reset repeatedly when I move or upload files.
Any chance we’ll see at least another firmware update for the N750, even beta?
Definitely looks like some cleanup is needed on the DNS Proxy Enabled setting for the N750. This seems to mess up even parental controls, too by the router getting bogged down eventually (2+ days). Turning this off improves the speed of parental controls and keeps the router from getting bogged down. Would love to see an improvement to this setting, even just a small tweak.
Hello,
When do you plan to release firmware that will support exFat format in external USB drives?
Finally I can get decent performance with the N750 router by setting static WAN IP address, turned off QoS and parental control. I still cannot access my USB drive from Android or Linux. I can only see the folder but not the content.
Mine too! 
Why has WD cancelled the My Net range? The N750 is fantastic, especially if you install OpenWRT on it. Why not do what Belkin are doing with their new LinkSys WRT1900AC that will have OpenWRT installed by default. The N750 would be a great lower end option, especially considering its price.
bz only 750 was good model(openwrt support is a BIG +), but in this line n900 was the worst router ever made …or fw is a joke
