Linksys WRT1900AC Dual-Band Wireless Router Review

A Closer Look

With such a history already set behind it, it is only fair that I bring out one of the legendary units which the WRT1900AC is based on. As one of the first routers that I ever bought (the first being a WRT54G), the WRT54GS brought speed and power to consumer grade networks and the unit seen below saw action at the heart of my network for nearly 8 years and it was only after I took the plunge into fibre optic broadband that I retired it to the cupboard and another router with more up-to-date specifications took its place.

like the original WRT’s, the 1900AC features removable antennae which, when available, will allow for upgrades in the future to further improve the routers wireless performance.

Looking at the WRT1900AC in full, the only word I have to say is wow. Whilst routers these days tend to all follow a loosely strung blueprint, with a vertical orientation and, for the most part, internal antenna whilst being packed into a black plastic chassis. The WRT however doesn’t care about current trends. Instead it takes the same colours and basic outlines and after a bit of up-to-date styling we get a router that comprises some very strong and bold lines that makes the WRT stand out above anything else that is available on the market today.

Running along two-thirds of the front panel is a gloss black panel behind which displays the status of each wired connection, along with each USB port & eSATA, each wireless band, WPS and internet status.

One extra light I will point out sits below each ‘”T’ shaped activity LED in the form of a simple dot. This dot indicates that a particular port is connected and running at Gigabit speeds whilst a port without the dot lit is only running at 10/100 speeds. A similar setup is found on the USB2.0 LED where the presence of the dot indicates that the secondary USB port is running at USB3.0 speeds.  Whilst simple and somewhat different to what we would normally see, they can act as simple diagnostic tools when required.

On the top of the router casing the front, blue part of the case bears the Linksys logo, whilst the rear half is full of holes to ventilate heat from the router away from the motherboard during operation.

On the underside of the router we find more holes into which air can flow to keep the WRT cool whilst a sticker to the front of the unit displays the serial number, MAC address and default wireless credentials. Four feet finish off the underside, each with a large rubber base and flexibility to mount the router on a wall in any orientation.

To assist in the wireless coverage, the four antennae are positioned both to the back and sides of the body, enabling the antenna to be positioned at a larger number of angles, thus increasing the coverage.

Running below a plastic shroud which extends back from the main body we get five Gigabit Ethernet ports (1 WAN and 4 LAN), a USB2.0/eSATA combo port, USB3.0, WPS, system reset, DC power jack and power switch.

Opening up the WRT to get at the insides is also surprisingly similar to that of its predecessors. The front (blue) segment of the body slides off to reveal part of the motherboard and after removing a couple more screws, the rear part of the casing splits in two to allow full access to the PCB.

Each of the antenna connect via a reverse SMA terminal that is set into the plastic casing, with a shielded cable that runs to the terminals on the PCB.

Taking a closer look at the PCB on which the WRT components are set, the only thing we can initially see is heatsink, and lots of it too. Comparing the amount of cooling that a typical router has, this setup may appear to be a little over the top – especially when we note that there is a fan on the top of it all. The matter of fact though is that users of the original WRT lineup found the routers to run quite hot when running open-source firmware, resulting in many choosing to cut out a hole in the top of the router and install a fan. Simply put, the over spec’ of this heatsink takes this factor into account and the fan for the most part is not running, leaving the worry about noise levels on the side.

After removing the smaller of the two heatsinks we find a second board which appears to contain the radio transceivers based on the line of four antenna terminals that run along the leading edge of the board.

Looking inside the secondary board, which is connected to the motherboard via two mini PCIe lanes, we find a pair of controllers and a repeating series of components which lead to each of the antenna terminals.

The two controllers which are positioned at 45º angles to the rest of the components are Marvell 88W8864-NMM2, dual-band 802.11ac wireless transceivers with a 4×4 antennae architecture to deliver faster speeds and more stable connections to routers with 3×3 setups. Whilst each transceiver is capable of running both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands on their own, separating the two bands on to dedicated controllers reduces the work load that each controller has, resulting in not only better performance, but also reduced running temperatures.

Running between the transceivers and antennae terminals are two lines of Skyworks amplifiers. The smaller Skyworks 2623L package which we find towards the top of the image below is a 2.4GHz wireless amplifier which gives +33dB gain to the wireless signal, whilst the larger Skyworks 85402 chip amplifies the 5GHz WLAN output by +32dB. A number of other Skyworks packages clean and smooth out the wireless signal for each antennae. This unique setup is what gives the WRT1900AC its supreme wireless reception and performance.

Looking elsewhere around the motherboard we can see the two mini PCIe lanes towards the left hand side of the motherboard for the wireless transceivers to connect through and aside from the large heatsink which we’ve removed, things look more typical for a wireless router with the IO along the rear and the LEDs along the leading edge.

Below two shielded areas to the right of the motherboard, which this time are fixed to the board, we have the WRT’s dual-core ARM processor, 256MB RAM and wired network controller(s).

Towards the front of the board is a Spansion branded S34ML01G100TF100 package, providing 128MB of NAND flash for the OS to run from.

Typically found on NAS products, an EtronTech EJ168A USB3.0 controller sits close to the back of the board with a shield running over the PCB to the port on the rear of the router.

Underneath the plastic pipelines which run to the front panel we find the 16 LEDs which make up the front panel status array, the internet status consisting of one white and one orange to indicate a loss of connection to the internet.