WD My Net N900 Central Review

Usage
Setting up the router was a pretty painless process. Here’s a quick video of it. The router simply asks to check for Internet connectivity before guiding wireless network configuration.

As always, updating the firmware is one of the most important and firstmost things to do. It’s an online upgrade process, where the router will handle all aspects of the upgrade once instructed to do so. It takes a while – more than five minutes.

I’m not terribly comfortable with the color scheme. In some areas, the shade of gray seems to clash with the blue and the white text can be a little harsh on the eyes.

One thing I noticed is that changes that require a reboot start a 100 second timer. The router uses every bit of that 100 seconds to reboot. Moreover, I noticed on at least three occasions that the router froze after coming back up. Connections to the wireless timed out and connecting via Ethernet yielded no IP. However, I repeated the process again and again and never noticed this behavior after the first three times.

Streaming to DLNA devices is easy once the internal storage or USB drive is connected. One just has to do a little configuration via the control panel and it’s up and running.

I wish that this router had VPN functionality. It’s probably the router’s weakest point. In my mind, every router should have VPN capabilities these days. Sure, the WD 2go can obviate the need to connect in order to retrieve files stored on the router’s internal storage, but it’s insufficient to access resources not local to the router.

Advanced Use
I noted that the MyNet N900 Central article on WikiDevi doesn’t list a processor, but does point out that the device has 256MB of RAM. The processor may be the same as the non-central version, the Ubicom IP8260U.

Like some of the other routers we’ve reviewed lately, this one has IPv6 support. However, it’s just basic support using an address assigned by an ISP and not 6to4 tunnelling.

If you’re an alternative firmware user, avoid this unit. I could not find an alternative firmware that supports it.

About Author