Photo gallery: Linksys Ultra Rangeplus Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router WRT610NDesign
There's a bit in every B-grade science fiction movie when the heroes think they've taken down the evil invader's UFO. Suddenly, it's revealed that what they've actually taken down was a scout ship, and the mothership that was lurking just behind the next planet reveals itself — and it's massive. Having decided to create a line of routers that look rather like UFOs, Linksys has clearly taken the mothership example to heart; it's latest router, the WRT610N, looks just like previous models — only quite a bit bigger.
Installation is via Linksys' snazzy LELA (Linksys EasyLink Advisor) set-up wizard. As with previous Linksys systems to feature this, Mac users just get the set-up wizard, while Windows users also get the very useful LELA network monitoring package.
Features
The WRT610N's claim to fame is that it's a true dual-band Wireless N router. What does that mean, exactly? It means that Linksys has crammed two radio units inside the WRT610N — one running at 2.4GHz, and one at 5GHz, both of which are compatible with the 802.11n specification as it stands. Also, 2.4GHz is the frequency used by existing home networking equipment, as well as a lot of cordless phones, and interference waves from things like microwave ovens, so 5GHz should be clearer. By offering both, and offering both at capacities that should offer full N speeds across both networks, you're getting (in theory) a best of all possible worlds solution. More on that shortly.
With an eye to wired as well as wireless speed, the WRT610N comes with four gigabit Ethernet ports — a nice addition. The WRT610N also has a rear-mounted USB port, from which you can hang any available USB storage device, turning the WRT610N router into a WRT610N NAS as well.
Performance
We've never had a great deal of luck with automatic configuration utilities, and the WRT610N didn't change our luck any; during our test set-up it couldn't detect our internet connection properly, and that part had to be performed manually. Otherwise, set-up was as simple as we could have hoped, although those who can handle manual set-up might want to go down that route, as we found the verification part of set-up rather slow.
We tested the WRT610N in both 5GHz and 2.4GHz N capacities. This requires you to have two distinct SSIDs — the WRT610N refers to the 5GHz network as your "media" network, with security handled by either WPA2-Personal, WPA2-Enterprise, or disabled entirely. WEP is not supported, and while that's laudable in that it's not a terribly secure algorithm, it'll also lock out some wireless devices — most notably Nintendo's very popular DS handheld console.
Signal Strength: 5GHz 270Mbps
| Distance from router | 5m | 15m (minor walls) | 15m (multiple walls) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linksys WRT610N | 71% | 37% | 36% |
| Netgear WNDR3300 | 85% | 45% | 44% |
| Netgear WNHDEB111 | 84% | 50% | 55% |
| Linksys WAG160N | 70% | 53% | 48% |
| Billion BiPAC 7300N | 75% | 59% | 54% |
| Conceptronic 300Mbps | 92% | 62% | 60% |
| Linksys WRT160N | 80% | 62% | 50% |
Throughput: 5GHz 270Mbps
| Distance between PCs | 2m, no barriers | 20m, multiple walls |
|---|---|---|
| Linksys WRT610N | 24.5Mbps | 8.76Mbps |
| Netgear WNDR3300 | 11.8Mbps | 9.81Mbps |
| Netgear WNHDEB111 | 18.4Mbps | 16.7Mbps |
| Linksys WAG160N | 19.8Mbps | 15.2Mbps |
| Billion BiPAC 7300N | 21Mbps | 13.3Mbps |
| Conceptronic 300Mbps | 15Mbps | 7.7Mbps |
| Linksys WRT160N | 4.88Mbps | 10.12Mbps |
We're finding all too often that while 5GHz should be less congested, we're hitting a lot of signal strength problems in our test environment with 5GHz capable routers. Your experience may vary. It's worth keeping in mind that only the Netgear WNDR3300 and WNHDEB111 were tested in 5GHz mode; the remaining Linksys, Billion and Conceptronic models were 2.4GHz and are included for comparative purposes.
In terms of throughput, the WRT610N shone at close range relative to everything else we've seen in 802.11n, but, as you'd expect given its rather painful signal drop-off problems, that dropped away once distance was involved, and it's still well underneath the expected and claimed ranges and speeds that 802.11n was meant to offer.
Signal Strength: 2.4GHz 270Mbps
| Distance from router | 5m | 15m (minor walls) | 15m (multiple walls) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linksys WRT610N | 79% | 50% | 53% |
| Netgear WNDR3300 | 85% | 45% | 44% |
| Netgear WNHDEB111 | 84% | 50% | 55% |
| Linksys WAG160N | 70% | 53% | 48% |
| Billion BiPAC 7300N | 75% | 59% | 54% |
| Conceptronic 300Mbps | 92% | 62% | 60% |
| Linksys WRT160N | 80% | 62% | 50% |
Throughput: 5GHz 270Mbps
| Distance between PCs | 2m, no barriers | 20m, multiple walls |
|---|---|---|
| Linksys WRT610N | 22.3Mbps | 7.91Mbps |
| Netgear WNDR3300 | 11.8Mbps | 9.81Mbps |
| Netgear WNHDEB111 | 18.4Mbps | 16.7Mbps |
| Linksys WAG160N | 19.8Mbps | 15.2Mbps |
| Billion BiPAC 7300N | 21Mbps | 13.3Mbps |
| Conceptronic 300Mbps | 15Mbps | 7.7Mbps |
| Linksys WRT160N | 4.88Mbps | 10.12Mbps |
The 2.4GHz frequency is where just about every signalling appliance in your house sits, so we were curious to see how it would stack up on a true dual-band router. The answer is, surprisingly well, which either means the 5GHz range isn't all it's cracked up to be, or our test environment is less "noisy" in the 2.4GHz range than predicted. Like the 5GHz range, the 2.4GHz signal had problems propagating through walls and other obstacles, but experienced less of the drop-off in signal strength as a result. It still didn't make a particularly large difference when it came to file transfers, however, which were very good at close range, and very slow at long range.
The big potential plus with the WRT610N is that there's nothing stopping you — and every reason to — from running both networks at the same time. If you're a wireless user who likes streaming video, but you're constantly being stymied by other people in the house downloading large files, or just copying across the network, this is an elegant solution — and at least as long as your 5GHz devices are near an access point, it should be speedy for all parties.
In our test of the Netgear WNHDEB111, we found the best results were achieved running access point to access point, which brings up the spectre that perhaps 802.11n isn't playing well outside its own vendor space. With that in mind, and given that Linksys provided us with a dual-band USB WUSB600N adapter (AU$139.95), we ran additional tests with that unit connected up to a Windows XP machine. Vista still has very weird issues with network sharing in our experience, which was why XP was used. The adapter reported much better figures in theory than we had been getting — Linksys' own utility suggested it was getting a signal strength of around 160Mbps — far better than we'd been able to get via a real-world file transfer test. In practical use, however, we got the same file transfer speeds — around 24Mbps close up, and around 9Mbps at distance — using Linksys' own adapter.
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