Western Digital MY NET N900 Dual-Band Router

 

Introduction:

Western Digital is not a name typically associated with networking and routers. If you look at their product line over the last few years it makes sense though. The Western Digital MY NET routers should make a fine accompaniment to their Powerline AV Storage, and WD TV Live.

Today we are taking a look at the Western Digital MY NET 900. This Router promises to make Entertainment “Effortless” with advanced features and Easy Setup. It is common for manufacturers to boast this combination but few can perform the delicate dance to entice power users and the average consumers who want similar functionality but are used to getting it in a completely different fashion.

 

Specifications:

Model #	Interface	Capacity	Technology	Wireless Speed
WDBWVK0000NSL	Gigabit Ethernet	N/A	IEEE 802.11 n/g/b/a	Dual-Band N 450 + 450

System Requirements

CD setup for PC: Windows® 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP (SP3)
Mac OS X Leopard or higher
Web setup for Mac®: Safari® 2 or higher and type in //wdrouter or 192.168.1.1
Supported browsers for setup and advanced settings:
Internet Explorer® 7, Safari® 2, Firefox® 2, Google® Chrome™ 7 or higher.
Type in //wdrouter or 192.168.1.1

Package Includes

HD dual-band router
Setup and resource CD
Ethernet cable
Power adapter
Quick Install Guide

Packaging:

This is what we like to see simple effective packaging that gets to the point about the features, and doesn’t overwhelm you with useless information.

Internal Packaging:

Again Western Digital has used simple and effective packaging. I can take the entire router out of the box without leftover pieces, the contents also pack back into the box effortlessly. This router arrived with no damage and was well secured inside the box to prevent movement while in shipment.

First thoughts:

Wow this is the first home use router I’ve seen that has more than 5 LAN ports. With a whopping 7 Gigabit ports WD is definitely throwing down the gauntlet. Being a storage company it comes as no surprise that they are giving us two USB ports for external devices, But take notice, one of them is USB 2.0! You can see that WD has included an active fan for cooling this device. I am very happy to see this but I hope it isn’t too noisy. This is a sleek design, but in the past I have had issues with wireless routers that don’t have external antennas. This is the most common design with manufacturers however I always like the option to increase signal strength with externals.

 

Getting started:

I typically deplore “setup cd’s” but we have learned at TechwareLabs, sometimes they bring more to the table than a default web setup. For the sake of exploration I will install this on my system to see where it goes.

First Steps:

The setup wizard from the CD gives you a basic configuration that is almost fool proof. It programs both of the available wireless spectrum’s, gives an explanation (if desired) for the dual network name, and even registers your device.

The router is working from this point and WD has given you the option to install additional software to help maintain your network. I like the option this gives you, typically with these install cd’s you are required to install loads of software that while bordering on useless, are almost impossible to turn off or get rid of.

 

After running the Installation shown above, I have been left with three icons, a WD router Login ( a shortcut to the router’s DNS entry), WD internet Security (a parental controls Add-on), and My net view (a network scanner that maps devices).

After these setup screens, the basic setup is complete and you can technically browse the internet. Though this router has so many more features which you will need to use the advanced settings to configure. See the screen shots below for a closer look at what the N900 has to offer.

Advanced Settings:

Western Digital delivered on its promise of  “easy to setup” but in my experience, if a company hits one mark they are severely lacking in another.

As you can see below the advanced settings are decent. They are neither complicated nor convoluted. While the maximum number of rules is limited for items like QOS, port Forwarding and Mac Filtering, I feel that for any home setup you should easily be able to work under these limitations. I have a very complicated home network including externally accessible storage and remote access and my final configuration is only 14 rules.

Registration	Remote admin
Timezone settings	Web launch notifications

The Advanced interface is a clean and straight forward to use. The initial screen of the Advanced settings is to auto-check for a firmware update. Keeping your system up to date can’t get much easier than that. The rest of the advanced screens were very clean and to the point, so if you are new to configuring routers or a professional, your should not be lost or overwhelmed with information you don’t need or care to read about.

Save/Restore the router’s configuration to your PC for a quick restore later.	Diagnostics and ping screen to assist with troubleshooting your configuration
Wireless AP mode	Logging
Dynamic DNS settings	Internet Status

The N900 has a really nice diagnostic and ping screen along with the logging screen which works very well for troubleshooting any network issue(s) you may be having. The Backup/Restore is very handy for the times you need to bring your router back to a point in time where you have everything working. The Dynamic DNS feature is pretty common on most routers today, but is very handy for the users who want to setup a web site that is host from their home/office server.

Storage Options	Storage Configuration 1
Storage Configuration 2	Storage Configuration 3

One of the features about the N900 that makes it stand out from the rest of the routers we have reviewed is that is has a USB 2.0 port to allow you to connect storage to the router and share it out. Also since the connection is USB 2.0 it will be up to the speed of the storage device and the connection for data transfer speeds. This means you can connect a fast USB 2.0 external storage device and have your data backed up at much faster speeds than normally possible over standard network connected storage.

Testing:

File Copy

I tried four Scenarios:

I copied Files from my Western Digital 2TB Green HDD to my Seagate 250GB Free Agent plugged into USB over Gb Ethernet (Cat5e)
Then I copied from the USB Drive to my WD 2TB Green HDD

Next I copied files from my 64GB OCZ Agility 2 to my Synology DS411+ 4 bay NAS

Then I copied from my WD 2TB Green to my Synology DS411+ NAS

You can see from the results that the speed and capabilities of your drive will greatly affect performance of your data transfers.

A Wifi Analyzer On Both my Android and iOS Devices proved a 10% signal strength boost in our home office when compared with the previous 450MB Wireless Router.

Here are the transfer tests to two wireless devices in low range areas of my house. The second device is operating on the 5Ghz Network, you can see the transfer speed difference between the two.

Tera copy speed over GB wired to network drive USB	From MY NET drive to wired GB desktop 2
From MY NET drive to wired GB desktop	Tera copy speed over GB wired to network drive USB
22gb from desktop to GB diskstation	22gb from desktop to GB diskstation

 

Overall thoughts:

The My NET router performs very well. As Western Digital promised the router is remarkably easy to program, as proof I was up and running with WPA2 security in less than four minutes after inserting the disk. The advanced features are comprehensive and will fit the needs of most networks, even for power users. Western Digital hit the mark, including seven GB/s ethernet ports, two USB storage interfaces, dual 450MB/s networks to maximize bandwidth, and out of the box media prioritized QOS as icing on the cake. You won’t find an easier to use more feature rich router for the 179.99 price point. Way to go WD MY NET N900, you win the TechwareLabs Gold cube award!