I got to disagree as most of the other brands like, Netgear for example. their Boardcom Gig Controller didn't have heatsink, and I was wondering why my the ports were going duff. So instead of Gig port they're acting like 100mbps. The controller chipset was over heating again no heat sink. I ended putting heat sensor probe on it. I was getting over 131F.
Senao - EnGenius ESR-9855G
- Thread starter tipstir
- Start date
I got to disagree as most of the other brands like, Netgear for example. their Boardcom Gig Controller didn't have heatsink, and I was wondering why my the ports were going duff. So instead of Gig port they're acting like 100mbps. The controller chipset was over heating again no heat sink. I ended putting heat sensor probe on it. I was getting over 131F.
bigpapae35
Occasional Visitor
So no new info on the wireless chip?
I am still happy about the ubicom part. Just so everybody knows, you cannot compare mhz ratings from ubicom chips to other companies, their chips are highly tuned for routing.
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This was the only info in the email. Unbicom chips don't let you explore or allows 3rd-party open sourcing on the firmware. DIR-655 experience with Unbicom chips wasn't all of that. So DIR-655 had 275MHz and this one 475MHz about 200MHz more. Routing speed and performance of the hardware is at issue. Routers are like small computers in a way.
Anyway I'll just let Tim do his review. Then we'll all know if it's a good by or not. For now I am back putting the ESR-9850 through it's paces. I am not too happy with that as DHCP though. Still bugs in the firmware where you select 802.11g from 802.11n and it sticks in 802.11n. You got to do it a few times before it registers 802.11n.
bigpapae35
Occasional Visitor
its available at J&R, buy.com, beachaudio as of tonight
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Are you buying one? I'll wait for Tim's review?
bigpapae35
Occasional Visitor
i can wait if I know Tim is planning a review soon, but if I hear anything good from somewhere else first, I will take a shot.
It is a little expensive for a non dual-band router, and I was hoping my next purchase would be dual band. To have all my video streaming on 5ghz and my torrent traffic on 2.4ghz
Atheros AR9223 2.4Ghz b/g/n 2T2R miniPCI module
131F = 55C, which is actually pretty cool for an IC.
Realtek datasheet mentions recommended operating ambient temperature 70C.
Maximum absolute is 125C.
http://realtek.info/pdf/rtl8366s_8366sr_datasheet_vpre-1.4_20071022.pdf
The Netgear's problem should be somewhere else.
Caused ports to be duff from 1000mbps to 100mbps. 131F is what I had measured at. It was climbing higher. I told Netgear but all they told me the device wasn't working correctly. Return to us. No free return, I had to paid for it even while is was brand new. Goes to show how Netgear does business. So Ihad opt out and purchased another brand that had better warranty like 5 years heatsink on the controller etc.
bigpapae35
Occasional Visitor
I had a feeling it was an atheros chip, since i have never seen ubicom matched up with anything other then atheros
VPN doesn't play nice on the ESR-9850 and wireless doesn't trigger if it detects other wireless AP in local area. Shame but oh well I got the DD-WRT for 802.11g turned up in mW by 75 and let the two Belkin N+ manage 802.11n and DHCP. Since firmware 1.1.28 release quite speedy.
Out $100 bucks. But don't know if I would touch ESR-9855G after the going through the hoops of ESR-9850. Next crop of routers later after the summer in the Fall I'll see what they have to offer and keep on close eye on Tim's reviews.
So far, so good
Not sure what possessed me to purchase the ESR-9855G, instead of one of any number of other brands/models out there, but last week I found that Buy.com had this product in stock and so I pulled the trigger and so I finally replaced my old D-Link DI-524 router this past weekend.
So far, so good. I have no complaints, yet! I wish it had the feature to periodically e-mail the log file, something the D-Link routers can do, but I'll live.
Not sure what possessed me to purchase the ESR-9855G, instead of one of any number of other brands/models out there, but last week I found that Buy.com had this product in stock and so I pulled the trigger and so I finally replaced my old D-Link DI-524 router this past weekend.
So far, so good. I have no complaints, yet! I wish it had the feature to periodically e-mail the log file, something the D-Link routers can do, but I'll live.
Have you run any LAN to LAN test over the gig and how about wireless? Do you see any dropping in connections? How's the internet in browsing webs sites? Do they open quickly or drag to open?
I haven't had any issues for my normal everyday use. Web browsing has been fine. I played over xbox live last night and it was fine. My one Netflix streaming test for 10 minutes to my Tivo worked better than it had been with my old router. I never run any sort of benchmarking, other than the usual Internet speed tests from the usual sites like speakeasy and speedtest.net. So far, it does seem that my upload is a few kbps slower than it was with my old DI-524. I was getting between 924-962 kbps across six tests I recorded going back to Feb '10. So far, with the ESR-9855G I've had between 887-903 kbps, for the past few days. Download has been a few kbps faster or basically the same. Of course, with cable modems, I can't say that if I hooked up my old router right now, I wouldn't see the same slower upload benchmark today. Stupidly, I forgot to do a test right before swapping out routers. In any case, my personal expectations have been met so far.
As for wi-fi, it is vastly superior to the poor wireless I had with my old DI-524.
Sometimes it would take up to a minute for my old Dell laptop to authenticate and my Nokia N810 wouldn't connect for up to 3 minutes after turning it on, unless I forced the issue. With the ESR-9855G, my laptop and Nokia are connecting within a second or two, which is clearly a huge improvement. Obviously, I lived with such nonsense for a long time, because I don't do anything like gaming or file copying across wireless in my house. For those who depend on wi-fi for gaming or video streaming, well, I really couldn't say how well it would work, but I haven't had any disconnections or anything when I have had my laptop connected for e-mail and web browsing or playing a video file stored on my old Buffalo (original 160GB) Linkstation. So, again, my personal expectations have been met so far and this is clearly an upgrade from my old router, but my assumption is that most people on this site have far greater expectations or needs than I do.
I did just do a file copy of a very large backup RAR file (a little less than 5GB) to my old Buffalo Linkstation from my PC and it took 15 minutes. I then copied it back to my PC and it took 11 minutes.
My next purchase is likely to be a Synology NAS which I expect to be a huge improvement over my old Linkstation.
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Thank you for your in-depth observational view of this ESR-9855 router performance on your network environment.
I don't do any heavy internet LAN to WAN or WAN to LAN multi-player real-time gaming myself. Once in a while I'll have LAN Party here for multi-player experience. I mostly move large GB of data files around along with streaming music, videos, online HD media, podcast general and extreme downloading but not too often.
How's the Web Gui? Basic or Advanced? Your Dlink had some extra features do you see anything like placing this router in AP or WDS?
The first two routers in my life were Netgear, before getting the D-Link model I used for the past 3.5 years. I've also worked on Linksys routers for friends. I would say the web management in this ESR-9855G router is at least as good, if not better, than any other router I've personally worked on, not that I have ever graded any of them in any sort of objective way.
I just looked at the ESR-9850 manual on their web site and the few screen shots they have are a little different from the interface used on the ESR-9855G. Interesting. I see the 9850 has a Bandwidth Monitor page, but the 9855G does not.
In terms of documentation, the 9855G manual is 129 pages long compared to 69 pages for the 9850, although the 17 of those 129 pages is a glossary which the 9850 manual doesn't include. I just point that out, because my initial reaction, especially coming from using the DI-524 for years, was this Engenius 9855G product had some good thought put into it, from the pleasing external design to the very thorough PDF and built-in HTML documentation.
It is strange that they still don't have the 9855G manual posted on their web sites yet, only the datasheet. The PDF manual file is dated January 26, 2010.
I just looked at the ESR-9850 manual on their web site and the few screen shots they have are a little different from the interface used on the ESR-9855G. Interesting. I see the 9850 has a Bandwidth Monitor page, but the 9855G does not.
In terms of documentation, the 9855G manual is 129 pages long compared to 69 pages for the 9850, although the 17 of those 129 pages is a glossary which the 9850 manual doesn't include. I just point that out, because my initial reaction, especially coming from using the DI-524 for years, was this Engenius 9855G product had some good thought put into it, from the pleasing external design to the very thorough PDF and built-in HTML documentation.
It is strange that they still don't have the 9855G manual posted on their web sites yet, only the datasheet. The PDF manual file is dated January 26, 2010.
luckman212
New Around Here
I've had a 9855G installed at my small home for the last couple of months, never had any problem with it. The gui is extremely fast and the router boots/reboots in under 10 seconds which is very fast (comparing to DDWRT which seems to take 30-40 seconds depending on hardware). it's a good cheap reliable router.
that being said there are a couple of issues.
1) wireless range is 'average' at best. I've installed a couple of these for friends & even one customer and some of them say the range is less than their previous routers which were basic netgear or linksys models. ymmv.
2) no snmp, and very little bandwidth usage info-- makes QoS troubleshooting a little difficult
3) router’s built-in DNS server does not add hosts from the static-leases section -- so if you define a local host called 'bedroom-pc' and then try to ping bedroom-pc you will get 'unknown host'. I notified Engenius about these problems but their response was underwhelming.
that being said there are a couple of issues.
1) wireless range is 'average' at best. I've installed a couple of these for friends & even one customer and some of them say the range is less than their previous routers which were basic netgear or linksys models. ymmv.
2) no snmp, and very little bandwidth usage info-- makes QoS troubleshooting a little difficult
3) router’s built-in DNS server does not add hosts from the static-leases section -- so if you define a local host called 'bedroom-pc' and then try to ping bedroom-pc you will get 'unknown host'. I notified Engenius about these problems but their response was underwhelming.
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