I use a Time Warner high speed cable connection for Internet. I want the biggest, knarliest and most robust router I can get for home and home office use. I’m sick of the “little routers” that **bleep** out under max usage, and I now have one that renews it’s IP lease every 12 hours, knocking everyone off the LAN while it does it’s thing - that’s gotta’ go!
My local Best Buy has the N900, which seems like a good router, but would I be better off with the AC1300? I just found out about these routers from WD yesterday, and I’m not familiar with anyone who presently uses them. It seems like the 1300 has some additional network monitoring software, that I’d really like using. My current (a Netgear) has VERY limited logging capability and only the standard minimal configuation options. I really don’t need “pushbutton configuation.” I CAN figure it out for myself. And I’m not concerned about the extra bucks for the 1300 - I only want to spend it once anyway.
Does anyone have any experience with the AC1300 you could share? Thanks a bunch!
The included network diagnostics tool monitors your network for you. It shows how many devices are on your network, analyzes common network connectivity issues and helps correct them when they occur so you are back up and running quickly."
I don’t see the same verbage in the sales pitch from WD regarding the N900.
Yeah, actually in the meantime I downloaded it and installed in on my machine at work, which runs on a cheapie DSL modem/router/wireless plasticthingonthedesk. Pretty much it just did what anyone with a little savy could do from a command prompt with a batch file. I thought it might be a real-time gateway monitor of some kind. The picture on the WD website makes it look like something from NASA.
I would recommend the AC1300 as well. If you are going to spend the money for a new wireless router, you might as well get the latest generation. As Tony said the AC1300 supports 802.11ac. In the coming months, there will be more ac adapters released and after a while you will wish that you had bought the faster ac router. In addition, WD also has a really nice ac bridge to go along with their AC1300 router (my Net AC Bridge). The ac bridge gives devices that are connected to it the ability to stream HD wirelessly.
I bought the AC1300, and it’s been up and running for about an hour. Setup, both wired and wireless, almost happens automatically. The router comes with a setup disk, but it doesn’t seem to be needed.
So far I’ve upgraded the firmware, rebooted and connected a 1 TB My Book to the router. I probably need to give it some time and tweek some settings, but if the external drive continues at its current speed (something between 1200 and 2400 baud) it’s going back on the PC where it was before. Just moving one large .jpg file makes my little cursor circle-thingy run out of blinker fluid!
So far the wife’s iPad connected to the 5 ghz signal with very little trouble. I’m wondering if all the AC1300 routers are shipped with the same wireless password?
The external USB 1Tb My Book drive is still VERY slow. This morning I attempted to copy over about 25 files, and before the first one made the trip I had to cancel. Windows Explorer was telling me “Time Remaining 22 hours.” I guess Windows 7 doesn’t know the symbol for infinity.
Tonight I’ll try the pinhole reset with the drive connected and see if that makes it work better.
Question: Is it a good idea to save the configuration to a file and reload it after a hard reset, or does that invite the same problems back into the router? It would save some time if I didn’t have to reenter everything again.
