Linksys EA8500 Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Smart Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

[sfx2000]

There appears to be something seriously amiss with the AirPlay support.

Not just the EA8500 - WRT-1900ac has similar problems... not a QC/Atheros or Marvell problem, but likely in the Linksys code...

 

[Andy Foster]

Had a live chat with LINKSYS last night and according to them everything is fine with AirPlay. Hmmmm right. Typically when I was in that chat things were behaving themselves with both the Airport Expresses (which I had done a factory reset) and the laptop connected to the Linksys on 5GHz. As soon I ended the chat I lost the AE's again. Unplugging and replugging made them reappear, so I tried switching off WMM powersave mode in the advanced settings which I had seen mentioned in a Linksys forum. No better. As somebody said in a post elsewhere it's difficult to believe that with so many millions of Apple idevices out there they do not seem to be taking this seriously. Well when I get chance I will start again, and any problems I will take to the Linksys forums rather than clogging up this one. It was pointed out that my 90 days complimentary support on the EA8500 has expired, although according to the guy on eBay I bought it off it has never been registered. Hmmm perhaps I should try registering the brick.

Many thanks for peoples replies. Will post back if I ever get it working.

UPDATE: Please see later post as AirPlay performance is now fine.

 

[Hydro]

Ugh, that stinks! I guess I've been lucky - I've had no hiccups with successfully running AirPlay with my 8500 ever since I got it last fall. My 4 AP devices scattered around my house are all old-gen Airport Expresses (MB321LL/A models), and are all used just for music streaming (via Google Play Music) & playing podcasts. With only rare exception, I use a refurbed 5G ipod touch as my in-home media device to run the music and podcast apps. The ipod touch and all Airport Expresses are set up on my 2.4 net.

My iPhone 6 is on my 5g net, but it also seems to works fine with my AirPlay setup too.

I don't recall making any unique setting modifications in my router's setup - I'm pretty sure I'm just running all defaults settings, at least more or less. But if there's a settings-related question, I'd be happy to clarify what I have.

I just updated to the latest firmware tonight, and AirPlay is still working well.

Cheers, Chris

 

[Andy Foster]

Very interesting. Encourages me to try again although I have managed to get everything running by avoiding putting any of the receivers on the 8500. I updated to the latest firmware as soon as I got the router. All settings were at default when I started and apart from running in bridge mode the only thing I changed was network names and then finally the powersave switch. I think I need to start again with the 8500. I totally reset my laptops tcp yesterday as I was getting intermittent DNS look up failures. That seems to have cleared that error so far, so it is possible there was some corruption in the underlying network set up on the laptop. Didn't experiment enough with my 4G iPod Touch. Bad technique, hope I haven't been bad mouthing the 8500 unfairly as apart from the AirPlay it seems to be doing pretty well now. Thanks for the info.

UPDATE: Please see later post as AirPlay performance is now fine.

 

[Andy Foster]

UPDATE ON AIRPLAY: OK so have just updated to Jan '16 firmware, realised I was on Aug '15 firmware (DD/MM or MM/DD confused). Very happy to report all working well at the moment. Have Airport Express connected to EA8500 5GHz, Pure Contour connected to EA8500 2.4GHz, and Airport Express on Cat5 cable from switch in 3-port TP-LINK TL-PA8030 powerline. Driving music primarily from laptop connected to EA8500 2.4GHz. Everything working AND solved problems with Arcam RLink DAC due to jitter.

The only other possible coincidence was I realised I still had the driver for the TP-LINK T1U Nano USB adaptor installed on the laptop and that had been causing problems before. May have been a crooked install but was capable of doing weird things to on-board wi-fi if the T1U wasn't connected.

Anyway I am at the moment a happy bunny. My music net works as I wanted and now the AirPlay is working am very happy with the EA8500. May not be the fastest on the block (I am not exactly pushing it yet) but hopefully now very stable as new devices get added.

 

[ddarko]

I've been having a problem with the latest firmware build 169978. I only noticed it was out about a week ago and foolishly decided to install it even though I was running on the previous 168206 without any issues. Since I moved to 169978 a week ago, I've come home twice now to find all my wireless devices are disconnected from the router and cannot reconnect. Powering the router off/on makes everything fine but loss of wireless connection happened again after two or three days.

I tried to revert to 168206 last night with a saved copy of the older firmware but the process aborted with an error message. Is there a special trick to install older firmware? I should say I was doing it via wireless connection, as I have done with all my firmware updates without issue, but maybe I need to physically wire my computer to the router? Any suggestions would be welcome.

Edited to add: A user on the Linksys forum pointed out
that the router has a restore previous firmware option that I had completely forgotten about. He also had the same problem I have with the latest 169978 firmware. Hopefully Linksys support can investigate and follow up?

 

[dfran1]

I don't know if this is related BUT I found something everyone should know.
I had posted this in the linksys forums also. I posted this on 1-27-2016

Lets start back 2 days ago...

I installed a new NVR at my work place. I have a EA8500 router there as I also do at home.

In the 3 days (including today), I have a wifi only laptop for one of my fellow employees, an his laptop (windows 10) and my Macbook pro both on wifi could not get a constant connection to the NVR, sometimes it worked, but most of the time video would show for ~6 seconds then pause then show for ~6 seconds then pause, you get it......

Now When I had my macbook pro plugged in I saw no issues at all (so problem is just on wifi, and I tried both 2.4 and 5GHz, both had the same issues).....

I spent over 8 hours with the NVR tech support trying to figure out what was wrong with the NVR.

Today I factory defaulted the EA8500 router at work and same problem....

Well I saw someone post about "express Forwarding" in the Administration tab under connectivity, I unchecked that (now my router at work took an auto update and put a check in there before and after factory defaulting the router (just to let you all know, its checked by default).

I Unchecked it and low and behold NO MORE wifi NVR video drops, meaning perfect streaming now!!!!!

Now in saying this my home router I checked it (it did not check it by default nor have I have done a factory default since the new firmware) and have saw no issues to date at all nor did I see any other issues at all at work before unchecking it.

If this does not help , this may help others with strange wifi issues wit the latest update.

Best of luck.

 

[sfx2000]

stopped by Fry's Electronics (brick and mortar store over in Stoneridge (San Diego)) - they have the EA8500 right now for $200 - also they have WRT1900ac V2 and WRT1900acs (V3?) for $229.00...

Lot's of Asus RT-AC87U's marked down, right next to the RT-AC5300's (@$399, yikes!!!)

 

[ddarko]

So instead of reverting to the prior firmware, I did a hardware reset and wiped my settings. I'd never done a reset after previous firmware updates but saw that a reset was recommended step by Linksys after a firmware update. Since the reset, my devices haven't disconnected from the router. It's only been a week so I'm not ready yet to say problem solved but a week has been the longest period of trouble-free operation since installing firmware 169978.

Of course, a few hours after posting the above, everything disconnected from the router. Sigh, rolled back to previous firmware and will be staying with it till Linksys acknowledges and fixes this bug.

dfran1, thanks for pointing out that the express port forwarding setting is turned on by default after doing a reset. I don't think that setting was responsible for my now-hopefully-solved problem which was similar but different from yours but I had overlooked that and would not have noticed if for a long time.

 

[Hydro]

With the most recent firmware, I've been noticing an increase in occasional disconnects (device agnostic), but just on my 2.4 net. 5 ghz is working as advertised. Rebooting the router seems to chase off the gremlins for 5-7 days or so, then I notice disconnects on 2.4 again. Reboot, rinse, repeat

So far, I'm OK with doing ~weekly reboots that until Linksys issues a fix - it sounds like they are aware of disconnect issues in this latest firmware release. If the disconnects start to occur more frequently, I'll consider rolling back the firmware, but I'm hoping to avoid that (I'm lazy!

I should note that I've experimented with having "Express Forwarding" checked and unchecked - that setting doesn't seem to have any noticeable impact at all for me.

- Chris

 

[ddarko]

Devices disconnect from both bands for me. I am not so patient with having to reboot every couple days, especially since the last firmware was solid as a rock. There's nothing offered by the latest firmware that makes me tolerate the deterioration in the router's stability. IMHO, stability is the #1 job of a router - everything else is gravy.

 

[Hydro]

Well, I ended up rollin' back firmware yesterday afternoon (to xxx.168206)

I just used the "Restore Previous Version" button, so I didn't do the whole flash-reset-reflash-rebuild dealio, but everything seems nice & stable. Time will tell if it solves the occasional disconnect issue, but I'm optimistic - this 206 version was always solid for me before.

Here's hoping Linksys's next release is better!

 

[dfran1]

Yes, the latest firmware drops wifi connections.

I have now reverted both my home and work EA8500 to the firmware 168206.
I also did a full reset and manual config to my work router and that still dropped wifi connections with the 169978 firmware.

Linksys should re release the 168206 as a newer firmware so people with auto update will get it and not think they have a bad router.

 

[chester0711]

Okay, new to this forum and the issues I have experienced over the past few months are very similar to your connection drops. 5ghz works like a champ, even the 2ghz from my extender is great, but the 2ghz from the actual router itself drops in and out. I have done factory resets and thought the issue was thwarted and the next day we are back to dropping connections, sometimes it happens overnight.
Also, assumed the factory reset would give me the old firmware, but low and behold it is bringing in the new firmware that was released at the start of January (169978).
Now, my main question, is the previous firmware working for you guys? Should I roll back?

 

[dfran1]

Yes the 168206 works great.
in the router
select
-troubleshooting
-diagnostics Tab
"restore previous firmware"
if that does not work I can post it

Don't forget
-Connectivity
-Basic Tab
To uncheck "automatic" , or it will install the newer version again.

 

[chester0711]

Thank you! I will give this a shot.

Second question, do you guys find it necessary to dedicate IP's to your connections? I have also seen a message pop up on my Imac saying that another device has stolen my connection and then an IP address listed. In the past it has happened maybe once or twice here or there (again, not with the old firmware, so maybe this is a moot point after bring back old FW) but was wondering if this is a "suggested" adjustment. This morning it kept happening repeatedly and could barely stay connected as it happened a lot!

 

[dfran1]

I do it (dedicate IP's) at home but not at work, so.......
But never had the problem.

EDIT:
I do now have the NVR problem back with wifi on the older firmware, I was able to fix this with the latest firmware, but wifi drops I can not live with.
I just ordered a USB connection for that one computer to fix it till Linksys releases a new working firmware.

 

[ddarko]

Thank you! I will give this a shot.

Second question, do you guys find it necessary to dedicate IP's to your connections? I have also seen a message pop up on my Imac saying that another device has stolen my connection and then an IP address listed. In the past it has happened maybe once or twice here or there (again, not with the old firmware, so maybe this is a moot point after bring back old FW) but was wondering if this is a "suggested" adjustment. This morning it kept happening repeatedly and could barely stay connected as it happened a lot!

I assume the "stolen my connection" popup you're seeing actually says "Another device on the network is using your computer's IP address"? This seems to be an issue that some OS X users have run into. I'd suggest checking out this article here including the comments which contain suggested solutions that aren't mentioned in the article but that may be helpful:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/09/19/another-device-on-the-network-is-using-your-computers-ip-address/

A regular home user shouldn't have to use a static IP address. Although manually assigning a static IP address to your iMac would solve the problem, it shouldn't be necessary. The DHCP functionality in the router should ensure that the same IP address isn't assigned to different devices.

 

[sfx2000]

Second question, do you guys find it necessary to dedicate IP's to your connections? I have also seen a message pop up on my Imac saying that another device has stolen my connection and then an IP address listed. In the past it has happened maybe once or twice here or there (again, not with the old firmware, so maybe this is a moot point after bring back old FW) but was wondering if this is a "suggested" adjustment. This morning it kept happening repeatedly and could barely stay connected as it happened a lot!

On Macintosh - Press "OK" when that happens - somehow the DHCP server on your Router/AP has lost track of what devices (MAC addresses, not Macs, but Media Access Controller) have what IP's, and assigned the client IP to another device - happens in Windows as well, but Windows tends to not complain, and just request another DHCP lease...

If it happens often, then check the DHCP server stability...

 

[Rodbender]

Just noticed that Linksys released new FW for the EA8500. Has anyone tried it yet? I installed 169978 when it was originally released and back leveled to 168206. The new FW release information for US users says we have to upgrade to 169978 and then to the latest. If we do this and we experience issues, I don't think we can easily go back to 168206. Fortunately I'm not at home for 2 weeks, cause I can not resist applying new FW.

IMPORTANT: It is highly recommended to upgrade the firmware of your router using the Auto Update feature. However, if you prefer to do manual updates and your router is on 1.1.4.168206 or older YOU MUST download & update your router using firmware version 1.1.4.169978 first, before loading the latest firmware (version 1.1.4.170630 or higher).

NOTE: If you need any assistance in manually updating your firmware, please contact Linksys Support. If you want to upgrade the firmware using the Auto Update feature, click here.


Hardware version 1.0
Firmware (For US only)
Ver.1.1.4 (Build 170630)
Latest Date: 3/01/2016

Download 20 MB

Release Notes

Firmware (For US only)
Ver.1.1.4 (Build 169978)
Latest Date: 01/08/2016
Download 22.1 MB

Release Notes