20120626

EA6500

Apparently tomorrow Linksys will be announcing some new routers.  The upcoming flagship model will support the latest WiFi standard, ac, and be named the EA6500.  Reportedly it will retail for $220, which will buy a max speed of 1300 mbps, with four internal antennas.  It will also feature 2 USB ports for those that want both network attached storage, and a network printer simultaneously.  Look for further details soon, and the reported availability is August.

Jonas

20120614

Western Digital MyNet

There is presently no shortage of manufacturers that are in the router market.  Sure, just about everyone has a router these days, but it is not clear to me that they get updated all too often unless they are a real networking guru.  Western Digital has been a long term player in the hard drive market, and at first I was not sure what they could bring to the crowded router table.

The first feature is the FasTrack technology.  This serves to prioritize entertainment traffic over the rest, which translates to a video stream not being interrupted.  Other routers can do similar things these days, but those with an older router, from an older standard like g, would benefit from an upgrade.

The second feature is built in storage.  I am a proponent of built in storage to a router, and have a 4 GB flash drive permanently plugged into my router that I frequently make use of.  The new top of the line router, their MyNet N900 Central has 2 TB built into the device.  While a serious price of $349 makes this less of an impulse buy, those that want to stream media could use this as a turnkey solution with no fuss.  The storage space can also be used for wireless backup.

Tom's Hardware