Western Digital reveals the future of the
humble broadband router
Western Digital can clearly see the writing
on the hard disk wall, and so has now diversified into Wi-Fi routers, it seems.
From the outside the My Net N900 Central is a rather unremarkable, and slightly
larger than anticipated black plastic box. Inside is a cable router combined
with a four port gigabit switch, a triple-antenna dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz)
802.11n router, and some other things. However, what really separates this
device from anything similar I've seen before is that it comes with its own 1TB
internal hard drive! No really, it does.
WD
My Net N900 Central 1TB
The thrust of the N900 Central is to
provide a common location for all media to be stored so that it can then be
streamed to Wi-Fi and Ethernet connected devices around the home. To this end
WD has enhanced the dual band 'n' class Wi-Fi with 'FasTrack Plus', a wireless
QoS mode that is designed specifically to help the streaming of HD video. It
also opens up the possibility of having your own cloud service, where you can
access your media when you're away from home.
If this sounds complicated it really isn't,
because the disc that Western Digital provides with the box takes you through
configuring it in a very straightforward manner. Once up and running, you can
make quick changes using a browser. Using that interface, it's easy to create
guest accounts for friends and implement basic parental controls if you believe
in that.
So what you get is a complete cable router,
network switch, Wi-Fi access point and NAS box all in one easy to administer
package. How could it go wrong?
The problems with this hardware are
unfortunately numerous, not least this being the most expensive router this
reviewer has ever covered in Micro Mart. You can find it for at least $160 less
than the RRP, but that still doesn't make it cheap.
Western
Digital can clearly see the writing on the hard disk wall, and so has now
diversified into Wi-Fi routers, it seems.
While welcome, the internal 1TB storage is
a contributor to the high price, but the hardware it's connected to doesn't
have the performance needed to transfer HD files to it quickly enough. Typical
transfer speeds are in the 15-18MB/s range, which would suggest the hard drive
is coupled by USB 2.0 and not native SA TA. Or, alternatively, it's just
underpowered for the NAS role.
The internal drive is also not upgradable,
and should the box die it's also inaccessible, which isn't reassuring if you
use it in a data security function. Western Digital also missed a major trick
with the Wi-Fi implementation, in that it doesn't support the 802.11ac
standard. That makes it inferior to any router that does support this mode,
irrespective of what other tricks it can perform. In my testing, while the 5GHz
connection performance was reasonably quick, the 2.4GHz mode was rather poor.
As the lower range is more likely to get used, that's another disappointment.\
While
welcome, the internal 1TB storage is a contributor to the high price, but the
hardware it's connected to doesn't have the performance needed to transfer HD
files to it quickly enough.
What compounds this sense to me is that the
N900 is clearly where the future is in home systems; it's just not been
constructed to do the complete job well enough.
If you still fancy one of these, I'd look
for the 2TB model, because it's only about $48 more and better value than the
1TB version. mm Mark Pickavance
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Details
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Price: $564 RRP
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Manufacturer: Western Digital
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Website: wdc.com
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Required spec: Cable broadband, Ethernet
network and/or Wi-Fi devices
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Quality: 7
·
Value: 6
·
Overall: 6
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