Linksys EA6300 Advanced Multimedia AC1200 SMART Wi-Fi Wireless Router Reviewed

[DougD]

I just completed reading the EA6300 smart router review and found very informative. Last month I purchased this router to upgrade from a Linksys WRT54GL and found the EA6300 had less power out. Previously, I could log on to my router from my neighbors house and now the end of my driveway is the limit. Does anyone have the specification for radiated power for the 5 and 2.4 ranges?
Thanks,
Doug

 

[thiggins]

You can plow through the FCC test reports

 

[Fraoch]

Could it also be due to the internal vs. external antennas?

I have no idea why manufacturers use internal antennas these days - I sincerely hope it's not for cosmetic reasons. I always prefer an external antenna and have the idea it propagates signals better. Way more metal.

I could be wrong, it could be that internal antenna designs are quite advanced, but still...

I first noticed this with wireless music players from the now-defunct Slim Devices. The old Squeezebox 2s had an external antenna and could pull in a signal much better than the Squeezebox 3s with internal antennas. That was a number of years ago and perhaps things have changed since then but the idea stuck with me.

 

[thiggins]

Could it also be due to the internal vs. external antennas?

Possible, but unlikely. When was the last time you saw a cellphone with an external antenna?

Six internal antennas single-band antennas (3 per band) can perform better than three external dual-bands.

Could be due to different propagation characteristics due to the more complex N signals.

Try changing the router mode to G only and see what you get.

 

[Grim Reaper]

I just bought a Linksys/Cisco EA6300 (EA6400 inside case) with a price match for $117 CDN. It replaced a Netgear WNR3500 v2 that I am quite pleased with but I thought I would try out the EA6300 to see if it is an improvement. The Netgear with stock firmware was being used with a WRT54G v2.2running DDWRT as a repeater bridge and they worked well together. I am now using the Linksys EA6300 with stock firmware (the recent update version) with a Linksys E2000 (I recently bought used for $10) running DDWRT as a repeater bridge which works well too and is much faster than the Netgear and WRT54G setup I had been using. Consequently, I am keeping the EA6300 and saving the Netgear as a backup for it.

I also compared the contents of the EA6300 and EA6400 firmware update files and they are identical, no difference at all, which causes me to wonder if the EA6300 will actually be reduced in capability from that of the EA6400 with a future firmware update as it will be possible to just install the EA6400 firmware instead. If you want an EA6400, get the EA6300 with an EA6400 board in the case instead.

 

[PieceOfChum]

I doubt Linksys would diminish the capability of the router

I don't think that linksys would be able to diminish the router by using a firmware to make a EA6400 back to a EA6300. The reason I believe this is because they would most likely then face a class action lawsuit. Imagine the device says EA6400 no matter what the box says the device is actually an EA6400 not an EA6300 and it is labeled as such. Now that in an of itself is no big deal however since it is an EA6400 unit I think there is a good chance that it would get the EA6400 firmware. Second if they actually changed the characteristics of the router significantly and now customers cannot return it then in a way that is false advertising as the users judged the router and if they were going to keep it at least partly on the actual performance and throughput of the router. Lastly I think this would hurt Linksys's reputation and they really cannot afford that especially with competition like Asus coming after their market.

I do think they will actually put the EA6300 in the AC 1200 boxes in the future so future purchasers would get the actual router they paid for but that is a whole different issue.

 

[pleiades]

Hello folks, I just this week installed a new ea6300 in my home and am so far happy with it. I've visited and reviewed some of the FCC photos and documentation at the link provided by a poster above and wonder just how different this model is from the flagship ea6700 that isn't yet released in the USA?

Reason I'm curious is that my ea6300 and Thinkpad T530 with a Centrino 6300 adapter are talking to each other at the wireless-N 450 rate, which I didn't think was available with the ea6300/ea6400 models, only with the ea6700....

Thoughts? My ea6300 firmware is the as-shipped version (1.1.35 ??? I think), not the 1.1.39.... version currently available on Linksys' support page.


--Edit----

Oops, never mind guys, it appears I was simply confused. My thinkpad and the ea6300 are using the 5-GHz band so 450 mbit N is probably fairly standard now. Still curious about the real differences across these three new router models though.

 

[ma678]

I just picked up an EA6300 from a local dealer today and it is still EA6400 model.

May I ask if I will be able to upgrade its firmware to 1.1.39.xxx and still to keep AC1300?

Thanks.

 

[jbl86]

Linksys EA6300

I just also bout the EA6300 (that is really a 6400) and appreciate if you could tell me if I should upgrade it to the new 6300 software or register it as a 6400 and upgrade it to the 6400 software.

Thanks!

 

[thiggins]

I just also bout the EA6300 (that is really a 6400) and appreciate if you could tell me if I should upgrade it to the new 6300 software or register it as a 6400 and upgrade it to the 6400 software.

I would not apply any firmware upgrades without reading the release notes first.

Since it is EA6400 hardware, I would think that EA6400 firmware would work. But I don't know for sure. Anyone else try this?

 

[krum]

both the 6400 and 6300 are the exact same firmware; MD5 Checksum..
Also I am getting better coverage and performance for my home use then my RT-AC66u..

Chris

 

[ma678]

both the 6400 and 6300 are the exact same firmware; MD5 Checksum..
Also I am getting better coverage and performance for my home use then my RT-AC66u..

Chris

Basically we'll be able to flash ea 6400 firmware onto this model in the future, right?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

[TomNet]

So, I take it this is now the second model for which Linksys has used a better model in place of the 'real' thing for a short period after introduction.

They confirm this when asked and don't go to enormous lengths to conceal it, but they ship this better model as review units and don't notify the reviewer.

Impressions of a new product are made early in its life, by reviewers and early adopters (e.g. who review it on amazon).

Isn't this suspicious?

Aren't the reviews of this product essentially useless because the unsuspecting consumer will probably be getting a completely different product? I think the percentage of consumers knowledgeable enough to take advantage of this (i.e. make sure they get the right one) is tiny.

 

[thiggins]

Interesting take. I hadn't thought of that angle...

 

[sfx2000]

Possible, but unlikely. When was the last time you saw a cellphone with an external antenna?

Last cellphone I saw with an external antenna - iPhone 5, where the case is the antenna... same goes for iPhone 4/4S

In any event, even if you see a pointy antenna, doesn't mean it's real - Motorola, years back, actually shipped a very popular phone that had a pull out thing that folks that was the antenna, but actually wasn't - the real antenna was inside the phone - if I recall it was one of the old Analog Microtacs for a big east coast Cellular carrier where the certification/acceptance team insisted on having an external antenna...

Interesting history/trivia moment - this goes back a few years...

Internal antenna's were driven by two factors - design, folks wanted pretty phones, and FCC's implementation of SAR Limits. How FCC tested this - they used a head and torso simulator (HATS fixture), and with the phone in the position where people would have it next to their head, made much more sense to put the antenna at the bottom of the phone, away from the ear, which was positioned right against the head.

Now a phone with an external antenna pointed down would look pretty awkward, so that's what drove the antenna inside the phone. Now imagine what a phone would look like with multiple antenna's these days - two for Rx diversity (you can use one or both for Tx diversity), one for BT/WiFi, one for GPS, and the phone would look like a porcupine in rapid manner - lol...

The first internal antenna's were pretty horrible - typically -0.5 to -1.5 dB gain, as the RF front ends (PA and LNA for Tx/Rx) were designed more for external whips and coil stubbys - we'd have to juice the hell out of the PA's to get decent Tx performance, and Rx was always a challenge - this is 800/900 and 1800/1900 MHz bands for cellular/PCS.

But antenna design has improved significantly over the past few years - better computer programs, lessons learned, and the more recent RF front ends have this all accounted for.

The takeaway here is that much of what was learned in the mobile space has trickled down in the WiFi space, and most of the internal antenna designs you see these days are pretty efficient, on par with external Dipole's that you see on some gear - it's mostly cosmetic, as some folks do equate pointy things as being somehow better

who knows, those external antenna looking things, they might not even be real

sfx

 

[sfx2000]

Interesting take. I hadn't thought of that angle...

perhaps a random audit a couple of months after product launch?

I've seen similar things - like Tx levels in conducted path being one value - max Tx there was 23 dBM, but in the radiated path, to meet SAR requirements, the power amplifier was turned down 2 dB to 21 dBM - yes, the vendor was caught on that one - and it cost them a year out of the carrier's product lineup, and that ended up being a couple of hundred million dollar hit on their revenue for that year... Not going to name names, but folks in the mobile biz a few years back know who it was - was a clever hack until they got caught.

 

[stevech]

On SARS... The media has forever not understood that the fundamental principle of CDMA cell phones (3G Verizon/Sprint) is use lowest transmitter power at all times. Power is managed by the cell site system. With CDMA, lower the average power, the more calls per MHz of costly spectrum.

With AT&T, T-Mobile, 3G (TDMA), there little or no power control.

I'd like to see a safety report that includes this reality of TDMA vs. CDMA.

With 4G LTE, it's kind of a mix between the agressive power control of 3G CDMA and 3G TDMA. Also, most LTE is 700MHz which seemingly much less prone to tissue-damage from heating vs 1900MHz cellular (where most 3G was/is).

 

[sfx2000]

Yep - even though the 2G CDMA handsets in CDMA were around 200mW, the AMPS portion pre-SAR was max Tx at 600mW - nice little handwarmers there for the dual-mode 850Mhz first round...

Now that's 23 dBM at the antenna, but back then, we had 2 dB gain on the whip (extended) and 1 dB gain on the helicoil (retracted) - so the PA wasn't really an issue...

for AMPS it was 28 dBM at the antenna - we had to put a slug of aluminum as the shield/heat sink - after a 20 min call, the phone would get over 100F on the surface

Again, this was all old-school - we had a 80186 running the CP software, a discrete baseband ASIC (DSP based, internal design), and all the Superhet IF gubbins before we got to the RF front-end... but that made it a bit easier for the first gen CDMA-PCS devices at 1.9GHz - same modem/baseband - and taking out AMPS made the RF and other work easier/cleaner - issue there was new PA's, LNA's, and SAW filters..

These days - it's all wrapped up into a single chip... but back then...

It was a good team - we keep in touch... I missed out on the initial proof of concept devices - the first CDMA "phone" was the size of a dorm fridge... forged out of FPGA's and VME type boards....

We've gotten this thread way off track - you can always PM me and we'll catch up... I'm based out of SAN - and still in the business, more on the network side these days.

sfx

 

[Mike_G_D]

SFX,

May be off topic but your posts were fascinating to me! I come from about the same era background-wise but from the TDMA side! Brought back a lot of memories!

-Mike

 

[ssnova]

Basically we'll be able to flash ea 6400 firmware onto this model in the future, right?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

I just got the ea6300v1.

I downloaded the latest ea6400 firmware from here

Then in the "smart wifi" setup through the gateway via ethernet I did "manual update", selected the firmware file and received and error...

Did anyone actually successfully update by using the ea6400 firmware?


I was thinking about just renaming the file to the same as the ea6300... but then again looking at it now, I see that the release for Ver.1.1.39.149770 was 3/20/13, meaning it's still relevant(same since the discussion)... so I guess it's a non-issue.