Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Wireless Router Review
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WD My Net N900 Review Unit
The Western Digital My Net N900 comes in a nice looking retail box with all the key features clearly labeled on the front of the box. It carries a 1-year limited warranty in North America, but 2 years in EMEA and 3 years in Asia Pacific locations.
By using what Western Digital is calling their FasTrack Plus Optimization Technology, the My Net N900 is designed to maximize bandwidth for any entertainment services being used. For instance, if you are watching Netflix and you want to BitTorrent the behind-the-scenes episodes, instead of waiting for movie to finish to start downloading, you can start up the process (along with others) but the router will know that the most important information is coming from Netgear and that this data takes priority. WD says FasTrack uses real-time analysis to do its job and maximize bandwidth for these entertainment services. Later on we will do some real-world multimedia testing to see exactly how well this works.
The WD My Net N900 router that we have today features the WD FasTrack Plus technology as well as high performance Wireless-N router with speeds up to 900 Mbs (450 + 450 Mbs over 2.4 and 5 Ghz combined bands). The N900 also features 7 LAN and 1 WLAN Gigabit Ethernet ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, and is UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compliant. The WD My Net N900 has a total of 6 internal antenna (3 for 2.4Ghz, and 3 for 5.2Ghz channels). Other than the 7 ports, this router seems to be on par with other manufacturers flagship modems. Even the price point or $179.99 MSRP is equivalent to other equally outfitted routers.
N900 Featured Specifications:
- Up to 450 + 450 Mbps Wireless-N speeds
- FasTrack Plus technology
- Simultaneous dual-band – 2.4 and 5 GHz
- Range-amplifying technology
- 7 Gigabit Ethernet ports
- 2 USB ports
- My Net software includes parental controls, Internet security, guest access, and network diagnostics
- Advanced QoS (WMM)
- WPA/WPA2, SPI firewall security
- IPv6, WPS, DLNA, UPnP,
- Wi-Fi certified
- 1-year limited warranty
The look of the N900 is pretty sleek measuring in at 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.5. If you need to put this router into an audio/visual case in the living room, the matte black and silver will certainly blend in with the other devices in your living room.
On the front, there are 4 indicator lights for power, wireless connectivity, internet access and network activity. There is also a button for WPS (Wireless Priority Service) for one-touch wireless security which should make any connection to the router pretty painless.
On the inside, the WD My Net N900 router is powered by dual Qualcomm Atheros CPUs and 128MB or RAM. The lion’s share of routing is divided up between these two chips as each handles 3 Wi-Fi antennas as well as 4 Gigabyte LAN ports. The 802.11n-certified Qualcomm Atheros AR9380/1 are the brains behind this beauty. I have to admit that Ive never seen an actively cooled fan on a consumer router before, but when you see the sort of processing this chipset is capable of, you begin to understand.
As you can see, the back of the WD N900 is quite busy. The official press release doesn’t mention anything about the N900 unit having a USB 3.0 port, but as you can see, one is clearly labeled in blue. These USB ports make it easy to add external storage, shared printers, scanners or other USB devices to your network.
Having 7 ports on a consumer router product is very rare and we have never seen this before on a router/switch under $180. Again, thanks to the Qualcomm engineers, manufacturers can have a bunch more bang for the buck.
Let’s take a look at the user interface and set up our new router!
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