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Phicomm K3C AC1900 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router Reviewed

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There is also a matching toaster!
Anyone have the latest firmware for the k3c? The link on the website does not finish downloading for me and is very slow. SW_K3C_703004848_V33.1.33.197.bin is the file name if it is in your downloads folder

EDIT: It finally finished, if anyone else needs it I rehosted it

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TQg-Q5oe2HpBWhMVSY7xqGDlRRZ8pxLQ
They don't do firmware updates since March 2018. But, There is also a matching toaster! : https://gizmodo.com/the-toaster-that-longed-to-be-a-vcr-5139135
 
they still haven't updated firmware, so I wouldn't recommend buying it if you want to plug it into the internet, unless you want to download the custom firmware from the Chinese message board.
 
Okay, but then why does this router still show up as the #3 Overall highest-rated router on SmallNetBuilder?! That makes no sense.
The ratings are based on performance only. You also have to look at the date of review. We also have paused reviews since about a year ago.
Phicomm tested the U.S. market by introducing a few products. They decided they didn't want to stay in the market.

As others have noted in the thread, if you are ok with having no support other than what you can dig up, then it's your money.
 
Interesting... When I tried to use the k3c as an AP it would get screwed up, it was like it was still trying to assign dhcp up addresses. Did you see any problem like that or devise a fix?
 
Interesting... When I tried to use the k3c as an AP it would get screwed up, it was like it was still trying to assign dhcp up addresses. Did you see any problem like that or devise a fix?
assign dhcp range to itself, like a guy above said. if you assigned it to 192.168.1.2, just assign range to 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.2 . or use static ip settings. more keypresses
 
huh, so it would try to grant a IP address to other devices, fail, and then my real dhcp server in my router would be able to respond with the real IP address?
 
The ratings are based on performance only. You also have to look at the date of review. We also have paused reviews since about a year ago.
Phicomm tested the U.S. market by introducing a few products. They decided they didn't want to stay in the market.

As others have noted in the thread, if you are ok with having no support other than what you can dig up, then it's your money.

May I suggest adding a small update note at the top of the review stating these caveats? I bought one of these on Amazon for $38.74 back in May of last year based on your review. It would've been nice to know that it hasn't received firmware updates in a while and that PHICOMM pretty much pulled out of the US market so you'll get no support.

Also if I may ask, why have router reviews paused?
 
Ran a capture for about 3 hours while running normal traffic through the Phicomm. Capture was filtered in Wireshark for ether host 2c:b2:1a:e0:92:02, which is the Phicomm's WAN port.

The only unusual activity was regular pings to qq.com, Tencent's instant messaging service and occasional HTTP Gets to ip.cn and ip.taobao.com.

Both gets appear to be trying to do IP address lookups, but no IP address is submitted.

ip.cn responds with a Cloudflare block and ip.taobao.com responds with this JSON:
{"code":0,"data":{"ip":"","country":"","area":"","region":"","city":"","county":"","isp":"","country_id":"","area_id":"","region_id":"","city_id":"","county_id":"","isp_id":""}}

There is no reason for the router to be doing this. But it's not harmful.
Tim,
can this be a 'mischief' point of entry/or collection at a future date? That is, can Phicomm at a later date change the properties and create a collection or capture of info you'd prefer them not to have?

( just thinking out loud)


thanks!
 
Tim,
can this be a 'mischief' point of entry/or collection at a future date? That is, can Phicomm at a later date change the properties and create a collection or capture of info you'd prefer them not to have?
Sure, it's possible.
 
Anyone have the latest firmware for the k3c? The link on the website does not finish downloading for me and is very slow. SW_K3C_703004848_V33.1.33.197.bin is the file name if it is in your downloads folder

EDIT: It finally finished, if anyone else needs it I rehosted it

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TQg-Q5oe2HpBWhMVSY7xqGDlRRZ8pxLQ

Hi, Do you still keep the firmware file?

The google drive link has been invalid.

I want to download the file but the website of phicomm has been unreachable.

Could you update the link?
MUCH MUCH THX!
 
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