Cisco Linksys E4200 wireless router

• 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity
• Six internal antennae (three per 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio band)
• Built-in UPnP AV media server
• 128-bit wireless encryption and SPI firewall
• NAS support

Stylish good looks and networking prowess give the Cisco Linksys E4200 wireless router wide appeal to tech geeks as well as novices. With a slim tapered body and no protruding antennae, it trumps its rivals in design and performance. The Cisco Linksys E4200 wireless router sports four gigabit network ports and a USB port that lets you hook up an external drive as a network attached storage device.

Press the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) button at the back of the router and you can connect supported devices such as printers and cameras to your network without a password.

Like the earlier Linksys E3000, the Cisco Linksys E4200 uses the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands, plus a guest access point, giving you three wireless access points (AP) from a single router.

Folks with new Wi-Fi adaptors that support wireless-N connectivity of up to 450Mbps can now tap faster network speeds offered on the 5GHz band. But they can still hook up older computers and printers to the wireless-GAP on the 2.4GHz band.

With the guest AP, you can offer visitors your home Internet access without allowing them access to your computers or personal data. Only the 2.4GHz band is supported by the guest AP.

A Quality-of-Service (QoS) feature can prioritise network traffic, so you can set work traffic from applications such as media streaming and instant messaging at higher priority.

You can also prioritise traffic from Xbox gaming consoles over other devices when you are, say, playing multiplayer games over Xbox Live.

The Cisco Linksys E4200 surpassed the performance of older Linksys WRT150N router. A desktop PC in a bedroom with poor coverage before, registered a stronger connection using the E4200.

Streaming video was smoother, with fewer pauses during buffering.

High-definition video clips streamed to laptop from a USB hard drive hooked up to the router showed no signs of delay.

Click for more: Cisco Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Router

Aside from providing a home with a speedy wireless network, this router promises to give users an enhanced home entertainment experience as well. It can work with a variety of devices such as smartphones, tablets and Internet TVs so users can share content such as music and movies wirelessly between devices.

It is also equipped with a bandwidth managing system. Users who wish to run multiple applications, such as playing an online game while streaming a video, will simply need to adjust their bandwidth priority settings through the router’s straightforward user interface.

The Linksys e4200 Maximum Performance Wireless-N Router by Cisco is a dual-band router that provides an excellent wireless surfing experience while remaining user-friendly.

The e4200 is a sleek and lightweight device, built with internal antennas, to keep its svelte silhouette. It houses four gigabit ports on the back, so that other devices like media players and game consoles can be connected, with a USB port which can be used to connect a hard drive to add storage capacity to the network.

On its front, the Cisco-Linksys E4200 does not have the usual set of status lights. Instead, it has a Cisco logo, which pulses white when the e4200 is starting up, or if it has encountered a problem, and glows steadily when everything is running smoothly.

Setting up the e4200 is a simple, quick affair and can be done on both the Windows and Mac OS. The e4200 comes with a quick installation guide and a start up CD-ROM, which contains Cisco Connect.

Cisco Connect guides users in both physically setting up the router, and to get the network recognised on their computers. The settings on the e4200 can also be tweaked through Cisco Connect.

The router has two separate access points, a 2.4 ghz and a 5 ghz band. The 2.4 ghz band offers up to 300 Mbps wireless speed, while the 5 ghz band offers a more powerful wireless speed of up to 450 Mbps. These two bands work simultaneously and, upon initial installation, they are set up as one combined wireless network with one user ID and password.

The e4200 has excellent wireless connectivity and range, and both bands performed exceptionally well while a file was downloading at a distance of about 20 metres with two walls in between. Playing online games was lag-free
and fast, even with a game console and a computer connected to the e4200 With extensive testing over four days, the e4200 did not disconnect at all despite heavy network usage for video streaming, downloads and online gaming.

It should be noted that the e4200 tends to get warm fairly quickly. It felt warm to the touch within 30 minutes after it was turned on but does not overheat even after extended usage. The only other problem with the e4200 is a small one, its power supply comes from a bulky AC adaptor that dwarfs the sleek device.

Overall, the E4200 provides powerful wireless speeds and a reliable performance. Setting it up is easy, and the guide in Cisco Connect ensures that everyone who can use a computer will have no problem getting the e4200 up and running in a few minutes.

In terms of performance, the e4200 offers a great solution to connect your devices, and its sleek design makes it a great conversation piece.

More: Cisco-Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Router

Belkin has been hit or miss on the router front over the past few years, but its wireless Play router is a definite hit. Here’s a concurrent dual-band 802.11n router (it runs 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios simultaneously) with a virtual guest network, a USB port that can share either a storage device or a printer over the network, and very respectable throughput and range that sells for less than $100.

The router is self-healing, too. It automatically detects and attempts to resolve network problems, and it will automatically reinitialize itself on a weekly basis (you choose the day and time or turn off the feature if you don’t like it). If that doesn’t deliver enough value for you, Belkin also throws several applications into the mix. Memory Safe is a utility that runs on your client PCs and automatically backs up whichever directories you designate to an external drive attached to the router. Music Mover is an UPnP- and DLNA-compliant media server.

And Daily DJ analyzes your music library and automatically creates playlists based on one of three user-designated moods: High Energy, Steady Groove, or Kick Back. We haven’t used this last feature long enough to have a solid opinion about it, but it wouldn’t detract from this router’s value even it if was unusable.

In fact, there’s just one feature we find wanting on the Play router: It
has a four-port 100Mb/s switch, versus a gigabit switch.

Continue to read this very interesting stuff: Belkin Wireless Play Max Router

THERE are lots of routers out there but I would think the new Belkin routers are the easiest to set up and get going. Out of the box, there are tags attached to the ethernet cable and power cable indicating where they should be plugged into.

The router is also pre-configured with WPA lock and a card which shows the router name and password. This spares the first-time user the bother and pain of setting up a new router.

Of course, the strength of the new Belkin routers is not that they cater merely to the needs of the techno-novice. They also provide apps to enhance the wireless experience.

The four routers available: Surf, Share, Play and Play Max, enable users to play music, games and videos, plus share photos and print wirelessly from anywhere in their homes. And there is a Memory Safe function that automatically backs up photos and files to an external hard disk.

WI-FI ALLIANCE CERTIFICATION
Any router with an “n” in its name is capable of delivering raw data rates of 300 to 450Mb/s, right?
Wrong!
The Wi-Fi Alliance awards 802.11n interoperability certification only to routers that support two or more spatial streams (each stream is capable of a raw data-transfer rate of 150Mb/s). Single-stream client adapters can be certified as 802.11n, but the Wi-Fi Alliance awards only 802.11a, 802.11b/g, or 802.11a/b/g certification to single-stream routers. Any product that previously qualified for 802.11n Draft 2.0 certification can be automatically certified to be in compliance with the final standard. When in doubt, check which logo appears on the box.

SWITCH SPEED
Nearly every wireless router has an integrated switch for making hardwired Ethernet connections. You need to move
upscale to get a gigabit switch, though; each of the devices in this roundup has WAN and LAN ports that are limited to 100Mb/s speeds. A narrow WAN port isn’t a big deal (even screaming-fast FiOS connections top out at 50Mb/s downstream) and you probably won’t miss a gigabit switch unless you’re running a NAS box or a server.

QUALITY OF SERVICE
Quality of service (QoS) refers to the router’s ability to assign different priorities to the various types of traffic moving over the network. Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) is a QoS baseline because the router must have it in order to be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. WMM is designed to prioritize network traffic passing through the router according to four criteria (provided the appropriate bits are embedded in the packets before they’re put on the network). Voice traffic receives the highest priority, followed closely by video traffic. Packets carrying a “best effort” flag come next, followed by packets identified as “background.”

Better routers include more robust QoS features. They might let you prioritize traffic by application (so that packets related to an online game are favoured over BitTorrent downloads or web browsing activity, for instance), or by IP or MAC address or Ethernet port (so that a specific device gets higher priority than anything else on the network).

STORAGE OPTION
An increasing number of routers support USB storage devices. Some models support true NAS (network-attached storage) functionality, so that computers on the network can access the drive just like any other storage device. Others provide access to the storage only through a built-in FTP server.

PRINTER OPTION
Some routers can function as a printer server, allowing you to share a single USB printer with every PC on your network. Support for multifunction printers is elusive, however; you can typically share the printer function over the network, but not the scanning or fax features.

PARENTAL CONTROLS
We’re not big fans of this feature (we believe it affords a false sense of security because kids will figure out how to circumvent it anyway), but parental controls do at least allow you to put temporary roadblocks in front of unsavoury websites, and they make activities such as peer-to-peer file sharing more difficult to pull off .

Cisco ended a nearly three-year-long dry spell by announcing an entirely new line of Linksys routers. The company also unveiled a new line of routers aimed at less tech-savvy consumers. Marketed under the Valet brand name, users can set up their entire Wi-Fi network using nothing more than the provided USB key.

Three of the new Linksys E-Series routers are housed in the familiar flying saucer form factor and use internal antennas. A fourth model, the Linksys E2100L uses the Linux operating system and features removable external antennas; unfortunately, the integrated Ethernet switch on this model will be limited to Fast Ethernet (10/100Mbps). This strikes us as an odd limitation for a product that’s supposedly designed for hardcore users and costs $120.

The Linksys E2000 costs the same but provides a Gigabit Ethernet switch and the option of operating your wireless network on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz band. The top-of-the-line Linksys E3000 ($180) has a gigabit switch and the ability to operate wireless networks on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands simultaneously.

Asus has developed a terrific graphical user interface for the RT-N13U’s firmware

Asus isn’t a huge player in the router market, but the company has come up with a few noteworthy models in the past few years. We’d happily count the RT-N13U as one of them if it delivered reasonable throughput or decent range.

This was the only router tested that was capable of sharing a USB printer, and while Asus claims it can support multifunction devices, it guarantees compatibility only with the ones the company has tested. We plugged in an Epson Stylus NX515 and could print documents, but we couldn’t get the scanner function to work. The
RT-N13U was also the only router we tested that was capable of hosting a USB hard drive, but the router permits only FTP access to that storage.

Several of the routers we examined had firmware that enabled them to be configured as wireless access points, but the RT-N13U was the only one that could also be converted into a wireless repeater. In this mode, the router operates like a wireless bridge, but one that can serve wireless clients. Repeaters send and receive at half speed, however; only a masochist would use the slug-slow RT-N13U in repeater mode

Click for more at ASUS RT-N13U Wireless-N Router, Access Point, and Repeater.

Powerline technology that using the electrical grid within the home to extend Internet coverage has been around for a while. It is relatively cheap and does away with the need for additional wiring. But while WLAN might well extend reach, it often cannot penetrate thick walls, whereas the electrical grid covers an entire house.

Now powerline has also gone wireless. Aztech’s HL109RN HomePlug 4-port Wireless N router has a built-in 200Mbps powerline chip.

This means while it can connect to other HomePlug devices in the powerline network, it also serves as a wireless router. This is a first in the Singapore market. HL109RN can connect to wireless devices and with other HomePlug devices via a “simple connect” button. This makes pairing very easy.

NetGear has released what’s being called the world‘s first native open source consumer router.

Officially,the router is known as the Open Source Wireless-G WGR614L, and NetGear writes that the router is aimed at Linux developers and open-source experts and includes a comprehensive open-source guide available for developers.

To that end, NetGear accompanied the release of the WGR614L with the launch of a My Open Router Web site that provides its community members with scads of configuration and installation information to put to use, as well as a Projects section, articles, and links to such third-party firmware as Tomato, DD-WRT, and Sveasoft.