Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Router Review

[Apoptosis]

Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Router Review

Western Digital has entered the very crowded market of Wireless Routers with their introduction of the My Net Family of Dual-Band Routers including the N900 which we take for a spin today. Besides being dual-band, Western Digital has included a technology called FasTrack which helps prioritize Multimedia data so that any streaming or gaming content is moved to the front reducing stutters and drop outs. Read on to find out what we think about this new router!

The device that we are focusing in on today is the Western Digital My Net N900 which is a dual-band router specifically designed and optimized for movies, games, video, music and other multimedia and entertainment services. This HD dual-band router is rated at 900 Mbps Wi-Fi speed (450 + 450 Mbps) has 7 Gigabit ethernet ports, two USB ports and a retail price of $179.99.

Article Title: Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Router Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1957/1/
MSRP: $179.99

[kenc51]

Looks nice

I'm in the middle of testing dsl routers from 3x vendors in work.
It will be for a new fibre product (FTTH & FTTC) we will be launching.
One of our requirements is 300Mbit wireless as the product will be in excess of 100Mbit into the home.
A couple of vendors gave us dual band wireless and I've had a real hard time working with 5GHz wireless.
So bad I think we will be going with only 2.4Ghz wireless N.

I don't know if you've a Linux box or not, but one tool I use to test the routers with is "ISIC" (IP Stack Integrity Checker)
http://linux.die.net/man/1/isic
I've ran this on ~20+ routers over the years and only 2x managed to cope with it.
The others would either lockup, reboot and in one case it lost all of it's firewall config and left everything open.
It would be interesting to see what happened if this was ran against the N900 HD.

[Digital Puppy]

Don't have a Linux box for the test to run on, but we are working on a script that will help give us a more robust look at these routers and their Wi-Fi offerings. If you send me some instructions on how to run it from a Linux boot disk I will. Just a n00b when it comes to Linux stuff.

Good point about 5Ghz, too. We actually played around with this (for way too long, btw), and that's why the inSSIDer tool was so useful. We could instantly see what channels were 'free' from which router and dial-in to the best frequency for our testing. We published numbers from the fastest channels so that we could obtain optimal performance numbers from both router units.

[kenc51]

Don't have a Linux box for the test to run on, but we are working on a script that will help give us a more robust look at these routers and their Wi-Fi offerings. If you send me some instructions on how to run it from a Linux boot disk I will. Just a n00b when it comes to Linux stuff.

Good point about 5Ghz, too. We actually played around with this (for way too long, btw), and that's why the inSSIDer tool was so useful. We could instantly see what channels were 'free' from which router and dial-in to the best frequency for our testing. We published numbers from the fastest channels so that we could obtain optimal performance numbers from both router units.

I'll look into runnning it of a live disk this afternoon. I don't run it off a live disk myself so I'm unsure of how easy it will be. I may have to test a few Distros. It's hardly worth it to you if you've to jump through a ton of loops just to get it running. I suspect it will be easy on a debian/ubuntu or fedora based distro.
I'll send you a PM/mail over the weekend.
:edit: Mail with details sent to your LR email addy

[Digital Puppy]

Don't have a Linux box for the test to run on, but we are working on a script that will help give us a more robust look at these routers and their Wi-Fi offerings. If you send me some instructions on how to run it from a Linux boot disk I will. Just a n00b when it comes to Linux stuff.

Good point about 5Ghz, too. We actually played around with this (for way too long, btw), and that's why the inSSIDer tool was so useful. We could instantly see what channels were 'free' from which router and dial-in to the best frequency for our testing. We published numbers from the fastest channels so that we could obtain optimal performance numbers from both router units.

I'll look into runnning it of a live disk this afternoon. I don't run it off a live disk myself so I'm unsure of how easy it will be. I may have to test a few Distros. It's hardly worth it to you if you've to jump through a ton of loops just to get it running. I suspect it will be easy on a debian/ubuntu or fedora based distro.
I'll send you a PM/mail over the weekend.
:edit: Mail with details sent to your LR email addy

Got it! Thanks a bunch. I'm looking it over now. (I really appreciate the step by step instructions - I am really just a PC!)

I'll let you know how things work. Hopefully, we can use it as a functional test for future products!

[Labmouse]

Thanks for the review on the new Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Router!

A question I have however is if you've done much investigating and or testing on the USB ports?

I'm seeing a lot of routers these days that feature a USB port (or 2 even!) for the use of attached storage and printers.

Any chance of additional coverage on the USB port functionality and possibly performance?

[Apoptosis]

Thanks for the review on the new Western Digital My Net N900 HD Dual-Band Router!

A question I have however is if you've done much investigating and or testing on the USB ports?

I'm seeing a lot of routers these days that feature a USB port (or 2 even!) for the use of attached storage and printers.

Any chance of additional coverage on the USB port functionality and possibly performance?

You can't assign a drive letter to the USB ports, so it makes traditional benchmark utilities useless. The only way I could think about testing this is with a stop watch or using something like teracopy. What tests would you like to see?

[Labmouse]

Oh wow, that's quite the bummer....I'm assuming by your comment that the router does not allow you to do a proper "mapped network drive" from windows explorer?

Teracopy is a pretty good choice but I'm lazy and just do file transfers through windows explorer in windows 7 and use the "more details" button in the dialog box to show the speed (bunches of mp3, maybe a HD vid or 2 in the low GB range)...the stopwatch works too and may be the most accurate. :D

Also a quick description of what the router allows you to control of the USB ports (and the procedure to hook them up if anything not intuitive)

Thanks!

[Digital Puppy]

Oh wow, that's quite the bummer....I'm assuming by your comment that the router does not allow you to do a proper "mapped network drive" from windows explorer?

Teracopy is a pretty good choice but I'm lazy and just do file transfers through windows explorer in windows 7 and use the "more details" button in the dialog box to show the speed (bunches of mp3, maybe a HD vid or 2 in the low GB range)...the stopwatch works too and may be the most accurate. :D

Also a quick description of what the router allows you to control of the USB ports (and the procedure to hook them up if anything not intuitive)

Thanks!

Sorry, I missed your OP...Like Apop was saying, the way WD is implementing their firmware, the attached drive doesn't act like a "proper" NAS. Different manufacturers do different things though. On the WD, you have to access the drive via a Web Portal sort of like Netgear's ReadyNAS...it is functional in the fact that you can get to your files, but it really doesn't work like a traditional NAS where you can map folders and files in a Windows or iOS. I've got some pictures of the GUI which I'll try and post shortly.