Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Wireless Router Review

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

I have to tell you that I really wasnt prepared at all to be especially
impressed with Western Digitals initial offering when I first heard
about the My net line of routers. After playing with the WD N900 though,
I am honestly impressed. Its not as if the speeds of the My Net blew
my socks off as they were on par with the Netgear during tests with a
Netgear USB dongleno, I was more impressed by the GUI and ease of use
of operation. Usually it takes a few iterations and versions for
companies to dial in on making a user comfortable with where everything
is on a computing device. Western Digital has obviously learned a
tremendous amount from their experiences with their set-top media
players.

I loved the fact that you could port forward with ease helping
those of us who BitTorrent. It is also worth noting that WD makes it
quite easy to manage your wireless networks and Guest Wireless
networks. If you want to create your own Cloud Storage, everything is
here for that as well. Unlike some other manufacturers, Western Digital
gives you a bit more management power when it comes to the devices you
attach to the My Net N900. The GUI is as simple or advanced as you want
and you will be hard pressed to find a feature missing. The Western
Digital Engineers even left room for improvement as you can update your
firmware with a touch of a button.

We ultimately learned a lesson about what to look for an expect from
these multi-band routers. The theoretical maximum speeds from
these devices is 900Mbps, thus the “900” in the name “WD My Net N900“.
This assumes all antennas are connecting at the maximum
speed to get this you must have thus the “3×3” or “Tri-Band Receiver” that shoppers will be
exposed to when purchasing their next-generation router. Most people when they get a new router from the store shelves might

Both our Netgear RangeMax WNDA3100
USB adapter and Intel 6230 wireless adapter are Dual Channel (2×2)
adapters and will give us a maximum connection speed of 300Mbps. This
is fine and dandy, but when you are integrating one of these next-gen routers in your small office or home, don’t assume that your “Auto” or “Default”
settings will give you these speeds. First off, you need to make sure
you enable WMM and QoS for your router. Then you need to find the best
channel to broadcast you Wi-Fi network on. For our test, a channel in
the 5Ghz frequency did the trick. For other users, your optimal speed
may be in the 2.4Mhz range. One thing is for sure, to get the maximum
speed from your router, you need to spend some quality time searching
out which is the best frequency or bandwidth to use.

One of the main attractions of the WD My Net N900 is the FasTrack+ to optimize multimedia data over your home network. This seems to work
as advertised as the WD My Net router streamed our HD video a bit better than Netgears flagship router. I’m really not certain if FasTrack+ is really all that much better than the normal WMM / QoS abilities but we like that Western Digital is embracing what users are looking for in their home networking gear. Western Digital has really done their homework presenting a great looking product with plenty of bells and whistles. Besides the
sleek design that includes an on-board active cooling fan, the router
boasts 7 Gigabit ports that you will be hard pressed to find in any
other consumer-based network product. The Western Digital My Net N900
retails for $179.99 and should be on store shelves today.

Legit Bottom Line:
As a
debut product for Western Digital, we have to give the My Net N900 high
marks. The functionality and the GUI make this a perfect purchase for
the beginner as well as the network engineer.