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Linksys EA6500 review: A user-friendly 802.11ac router with decent performance |
December 17, 2012
Cisco arrived late to the 802.11ac party, but its Linksys EA6500 (it’s hard to say the entire name—the Linksys Video Pro AC1750 Smart Wi-Fi Router EA6500—in a single breath) is a very solid, easy-to-use dual-band router with one unique, gee-whiz feature.
This feature is called SimpleTap, and it uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to enable you to join NFC-enabled mobile devices to your network by tapping them with a provided plastic card. That simple physical action instantly provides the device with the router’s security credentials. Unlike with WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup), you never need to touch the router when using SimpleTap. It does, however, require you to install a Cisco app on the mobile device. But we call it a gee-whiz feature because relatively few mobile devices are NFC enabled (Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone being the most notable). The SimpleTap card is something of a security risk unless you lock it away, and the feature is easily disabled if you don’t want to use it.
The EA6500 remains easy for inexperienced users to set up even if you can’t take advantage of SimpleTap, although this entails installing software on a client PC and creating an online account with Cisco. Experienced users who don’t want to use this cloud-based solution can log directly into the router to perform its initial configuration without setting up an account, but they won’t be able to take advantage of Cisco’s Smart Wi-Fi cloud service. The Smart Wi-Fi cloud service allows you to manage the router remotely from anywhere you have Internet access. It also enables you to remotely access data stored on an attached USB device (the EA6500 has two USB 2.0 ports, so you can share both storage and a printer on your network. You don't need Smart Wi-Fi to enable local clients to use connected USB devices.)
Linksys also offers a collection of Smart Wi-Fi apps. These run on the router and/or your mobile devices to provide evertyhing from parental controls (so you can control when your children can go online, where they can go, and what they can do while they're there) to media aggregators, device monitors, and IP camera viewers. These apps are a far simpler alternative to jiggering port-forwarding, static routing, DMZ, and other settings, but Cisco doesn't prevent more advanced users from configuring any of these settings manually.
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2020148/linksys-ea6500-review-a-user-friendly-802-11ac-router-with-decent-performance.html
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