Engenius XtraRange ESR600H

Engenius' XtraRange ESR600H ($115, street) is the dual-band upgrade to Engenius' ESR300H, a very affordable, single-band router. Like the ESR300H, the ESR600H has some performance issues and management software that could stand improvement, although the ESR600H's software does represent an improvement over that of the ESR300H.

Specs
The Engenius XtraRange ESR600H is a concurrent dual-band router that supports up to 300 Mbps throughput on the 2.4 and 5GHz bands. The unit ships with two detachable antennas.

Not as tiny as the ESR300H, the ESR600H is still a relatively small lightweight plastic device. It does stay in place even with cables connected thanks to the rubber footing on the bottom. It operates horizontally, but there are brackets for wall-mounting.
On the rear panel are four Gigabit LAN ports, a WAN port, and a USB 2.0 port. The top of the router has nine small LEDs that display status of the LAN and WAN connections, WPS, power, and each radio band.

The base of the router runs slightly warm after several hours of uptime, but did not get any hotter than that slight warmth after two days uptime.

Setup
A CD is included which contains the user manual. There's also a Quick Start Guide in hard copy to get you going with setup. The default user name, password, and IP address are printed on a sticker on the bottom of the router.?

The CD launches the Engenius Smart Wizard which details how to connect the cables and then takes you into the Web-based management interface.

The interface opens up displaying a network map showing status of the WAN, wireless radios, and devices connected to the router.? Something I found bothersome in the ESR300H and also in the ESR600H: after you've launched setup from the CD, if you click setup again within the interface, you are walked through setting up the Internet connection again, although it has already been set up.

Once you are in the management interface, basic settings include security,?of which you can choose None, Medium (which is WEP) or High (which is WPA) within the interface?for both bands. However, annoyingly, if you want to set WPA2 (which is what you should be using as security) you have to go into the advanced settings.

Another annoyance is that applying security, or just about any other configuration change, requires a 14-second reboot for the router.

Five icons in the upper right corner of the interface allow you to click to quickly get back to the interface home screen (with the network map), re-launch the setup wizard, go into network settings, select a language for the interface, or exit.

Network settings are useful for diagnostics as you can see the status of connected devices, set LAN and DHCP settings, or check the system log. There's also a monitor that will display in a line graph traffic flow for the WAN and for each wireless band.

The ESR600H supports features such as WMM, WPS, SPI Firewall, NAT, and VPN Passthrough. You can restrict communication between clients on the network. Other capabilities include DMZ and protection against DoS attacks. The router also offers QoS, access control/parental controls, and either printer- or network-storage sharing via the USB port.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/ExmgYZEi2MU/0,2817,2406966,00.asp

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