Cisco Linksys E3000 High Performance Wireless-N Router Reviewed

[drapos]

Nice review, as always.

But I have some things to point out.

1- You said there is no option for guest WLANs. As far as I know reading some other reviews, it have that possibility via Cisco Connect software. Up to 10 clients. Don't know if older models can benefit from that software.

2- You can change the Workgroup also in WRT610N models. Must be a firmware improvement not avaiable when you reviewed that model.

3- It support, indeed, NTFS file format. But is very picky about what device will accept. In my case, it works fine with a 32Gb pendrive and a 500Gb Seagate HDD.

4- About media server feature, I think it could be great to have a deeper article involving more routers. With a Xbox 360 it doesn't work as good as a PC. There are several file formats that the console can read from a PC, but keep invisible from the routers own storage.

Nice review!
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LovelyWendie

 

[thiggins]

Cisco Connect does come on CD with the router. So Guest WLAN is available that way. But it's a puzzle why Cisco didn't include it in the Web GUI. You also need to be careful about using both Connect and Web admin.

Perhaps you had better luck with NTFS. But I stand by my comments in the review.

 

[drapos]

What I can't understand is why on hell there is no telnet.
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MAKE A VAPORIZER

 

[stevech]

telnet = security risk .

 

[thiggins]

Linksys routers have never had telnet / command line access in factory firmware.

 

[drapos]

Just for your info:

http://yfrog.com/jqwrt610nntfsp

(Image shows NTFS drive mounted.)
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Small Portable Vaporizer

 

[tipstir]

Nice image shot. To get telnet session on these routers got to use DD-WRT features that. Turns it on by default if the router hardware can support? Secure CRT is what I use to console into switches an etc.

 

[danull]

Cisco Connect does come on CD with the router. So Guest WLAN is available that way. But it's a puzzle why Cisco didn't include it in the Web GUI. You also need to be careful about using both Connect and Web admin.

Perhaps you had better luck with NTFS. But I stand by my comments in the review.

You ain't kidding - I was just installing the E3000 that I won on the SNB contest recently (thanks again!) and this drove me nuts because the guest network was enabled by default and can only be configured with Cisco Connect. I had skipped the Cisco Connect to go straight to the Web GUI so I could configure things the way I wanted to and there was nothing there to disable guest network so I had to do a factory reset and re-install the Cisco Connect to disable it. I am not really keen on having guest networks enabled by default...

So far the E3000 has been working out very well (I was worried because Linksys really screwed me with the NMH410/Mediahub - and I participated in their customer feedback program with special builds etc - it is a poor, unsupported device - the features that set it above a normal NAS don't function adequately and it is not worth the price premium in my opinion). So I hope they continue to support the E3000 ;-)

The 2.4 Ghz Wireless-G range has surpassed what I was getting with my WRT54GS (with aftermarket/larger than factory external antennas + running DD-WRT). Aside from Cisco Connect the only other complaint I have on the E3000 is that the 5 Ghz range is disappointing - with the AE1000 adapter I only see 2 of 5 bars in my living room - this is less than 50 feet away from the router and this is in a frame stucco house. With 2.4 Ghz I see 5/5 bars and my Squeezebox Radio in the same room even reports 100% signal strength.

-Dan

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the feedback, Dan. Glad you're enjoying the product. I think Cisco will be supporting the E series for awhile!

Poorer 5 GHz performance is common to all dual-band N products. They need higher transmit power to compensate for higher attenuation of 5 GHz signals when passing through walls. And manufacturers are reluctant to spend the extra pennies.

You might try the higher 5 GHz channels. The lower channels are constrained to lower power levels. I tried a quick experiment with one router and didn't see a range difference. But it's worth a shot.

If you wouldn't mind, please post a review/ rating over in the E3000 review itself. Thanks!

Enjoy the E3000!

 

[danull]

You might try the higher 5 GHz channels. The lower channels are constrained to lower power levels. I tried a quick experiment with one router and didn't see a range difference. But it's worth a shot.

If you wouldn't mind, please post a review/ rating over in the E3000 review itself. Thanks!

Enjoy the E3000!

Thanks, Tim. I will try the higher 5 GHz channels soon (I think I have to manually change the channel with Web GUI and not Cisco Connect so want to prepare myself for what happens when I disable that again - that factory reset wasn't very fun ;-) - and will put a review/rating up in a week or two. Reliability is #1 to me and I want to give it a week or two to see how things go (only installed this thing yesterday!).

-Dan

 

[PKtm]

What's your secret? NTFS doesn't work for me

Just for your info:

http://yfrog.com/jqwrt610nntfsp

(Image shows NTFS drive mounted.)

I too have a FreeAgent NTFS drive, 500GB, but it doesn't mount. Tells me it's not supported:
http://yfrog.com/bcxvnp

 

[drapos]

Do you have any partition in the drive?

Maybe, have to do with the alligment or sector size.

Try with 512 bytes.
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Ipad accessories

 

[cneto]

You can try to connect the drive to a windows PC and format to NTFS there. My external USB drive mounted perfectly, with all files, and I´m playing media files on my iPad with no problem.

 

[johnjackson]

Could you guys tell me how good the range of the router is. I have wrt610n at the moment and I am not that satisfied with it's performance. Range is not that good and at 5Ghz sicks. At 45-50 feet (2 rooms away) I get crappy signal strength so I use another wireless router as repeater to serve the other part of my house floor. Connected to the wrt610n is a NAS server and streaming videos and dvds is literally impossible without the repeater. Do you think that I could replace the wrt610n with the e3000 without using the repeater, bandwidth of the wireless network and the transfer rate of the usb is better than that of the wrt610n?
thanks in advance

 

[tipstir]

Could you guys tell me how good the range of the router is. I have wrt610n at the moment and I am not that satisfied with it's performance. Range is not that good and at 5Ghz sicks. At 45-50 feet (2 rooms away) I get crappy signal strength so I use another wireless router as repeater to serve the other part of my house floor. Connected to the wrt610n is a NAS server and streaming videos and dvds is literally impossible without the repeater. Do you think that I could replace the wrt610n with the e3000 without using the repeater, bandwidth of the wireless network and the transfer rate of the usb is better than that of the wrt610n?
thanks in advance

If you have V2 then E3000 is V2. Although ratings from opensource unbiased world give this one :

WRT610 got 57% out of 100% and the E3000 got 72% out of 100%

Pros
true dual-band for the best performance, capable of broadcasting to older 802.11G 2.4GHz devices simultaneously without slowing down true 802.11N devices
NAS functionality
wall mountable

Cons
poor media server
no support for non-network-enabled (USB only) printers
not compatible with custom Linux based firmwares

You get better performance with the E3000 than you did with the WRT610n. I still like the WRT310n with DD-WRT on it that got 100% out of 100% when using DD-WRT. To me flashing the WRT310n with DD-WRT and signal was very strong at a buddy house!

 

[Unregistered]

equipment I have:
cisco/linksys e3000 router with latest Firmware Version: 1.0.01
Western Digital Elements 1.5 TB usb 2.0
windows 7/64 bit

I originally had it formatted from the router (fat32). I had 40 gib of data on it with about 5 shares created from the router with permissions. My plan to migrate all folders and permission to NTFS are as follow. I remove drive from router using "safely remove drive" option from router. I attached the WD Elements to my pc USB directly to transfer the whole drive (All contents/files + .storage_info {the router configuration file for the shares and stuff}) over to a folder on the PC. Then format the drive using the following spec( Capacity:all space, File System:NTFS, Allocation unit size: 4096 bytes, Volume label: same as before, Format options: quick format). After the drive finish formatting, I copy all of the contents back from my pc to the drive. I kept the file structure and the location of .storage_info in tact. Safely remove drive from pc, attached drive to router. Log onto the router from web interface and confirm it found the drive. However, my shares and info are not there, just the drive itselft and the file system is show as *. I then use the web interface to reboot the router. Log back to web interface, waited like 1 minute then I click on the summary button. There it show the shares in a read only matrix, and little improvement. I close that screen, waited another 5 minutes or so, I click on refresh. Dan dan dan!!!! all my share are back to original state. I further confirm from my pc, all the mapped drives and shares are back online. Hope this help, good luck.

 

[Unregistered]

use of the Linksys E3000 High Performance Wireless-N Router

Can this router work with Cable e.g., replace the router ComCast provides by default??
Thanks

 

[Andrew LB]

I had the E3000 for about a week after returning a Linksys E2100L linux based router and was less than impressed with it's performance. Yes, it had good wireless N transfer rates, but once a few PC's were online (two wired, 1 wireless, and an i-phone 4) and the thing just locked up.

P2P torrent file sharing? Hah! Not a chance. Once the connections got around 200, it would have a stroke.

And to think, I actually thought that by printing "Cisco" on Linksys devices with larger type and increased frequency, that higher standards would have followed.

oh well....

I plugged back in my 2 year old D-Link DGL-4500 and it happily did everything requested of it. Torrents, large cross LAN file transfers, and an awesome dual 300mbps (Yea.... 600mbps) using two mini pci-express internal laptop cards each utilizing 3 antennas built into the screen. It was sweet.


But of course over time those routers got buggy, and firmware wouldnt' help.

So I ended up with my first Engenius router, a ESR-9850.... and REALLY like it.

One thing i'm confused about. In manuals and on websites there are real time displays showing traffic, etc. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to access those.

I'm running winndows 7 ultimate and Kubuntu 10.10.1 on my PC. And my router has the newest 2xxx firmware (both parts) installed.

any ideas?

 

[stevech]

just looking at the user manual menus:
Leftmost frame: SYSTEM
Tab: MONITOR
--------

Says it supports 4 WiFi SSID's but I didn't see where you can restrict based on SSID, say, one SSID is hard-routed only to the WAN/INternet, no access to the LAN, for guest WiFiers. And encryption settings per SSID.
But hey, it's $59.

 

[Andrew LB]

just looking at the user manual menus:
Leftmost frame: SYSTEM
Tab: MONITOR
--------

Hmm... odd. I don't have that tab.

Perhaps I need to re-flash my firmware?