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The Linksys E4200 is a true dual-band router, meaning it has two separate access points--one for the 2.4GHz band and the other for the 5GHz band--that can work simultaneously. It can also create an additional separate wireless guest network, on the 2.4GHz band only. The E4200 is also the first we've reviewed that offers the higher 450Mbps speed on the 5GHz band. 

This is because the router uses the newer three-stream standard. To take advantage of this new speed, for now, you'll need to have a laptop equipped with an Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 or 5300 Wi-Fi adapter. In the future there will also be USB adapters and add-in cards that support this speed.

Guest networking is a great solution when you want to share the Internet with others but want to keep them from accessing your local resources, such as files or printers. The E4200's guest networking feature allows only 10 clients max, which isn't very many. Though this is enough for home use, it's not good for a public place, such as a cafe or restaurant.

The E4200 has simple support for network storage, including the ability to share the content of a USB external hard drive (formatted using either NTFS or FAT32), with user account restriction. By default the admin account has full access, including the ability to create more user accounts. It also has a built-in UPnP media server that allows you to stream digital content to other UPnP-compliant devices, such as set-top boxes or game consoles. 

Unfortunately, though streaming music and photos worked well in our trials, the video streaming wasn't smooth and sometimes didn't seem to work at all. This is mostly because the router doesn't have enough power to offer the fast storage throughput required to stream high-definition content.

For file sharing, the E4200 supports Windows SMB, so you can browse the share folders easily while using a network browser such as Windows Explorer. It also has the ability to turn a folder on an attached USB hard drive into an FTP site. We did find the layout of the Web interface for the storage feature rather cumbersome, though still easy enough for savvy users to figure out.

Like the E3000, the E4200 includes a simple, yet robust, parental control content-filtering system. This feature, which you can manage with the Cisco Connect software or the Web interface, allows you to change the way a particular computer on the network accesses the Internet.

Similar to other routers in the E series, the E4200's Web interface also gives access to the router's Applications & Gaming feature, which lets you set port forwarding and triggering for specific applications such as games, remote desktop, and FTP and HTTP servers. You can also assign static IP addresses to certain computers in the network, making the port forwarding much more relevant and easy to do. If you want to create a VPN connection, an FTP access, or a remote desktop connection to a certain computer in the network, you will find this handy and convenient.

Like most recent routers, the Linksys E42000 supports all available wireless encryption standards including WEP, WPA-Personal, and WPA-Enterprise. The router allows VPN pass-through for all existing VPN protocols including IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP, meaning that if you have the router at home, you can use a VPN client to access your office system.

The Linksys E4200 did very well where it matters the most: wireless performance. Note that we didn't have a client that supports the 450Mbps standard at the time of this review. (We'll retest when we get a hold of one and update this part of the review then.) Nonetheless, with general 300Mbps clients, the E4200 excelled.

In the 5GHz frequency tests, the router registered 100.5Mbps on our close-range throughput test, which is about 20Mbps faster than the D-Link DIR-825. At this speed, the router can finish transmitting 500MB of data in just about 40 seconds. On our long-range test, the E4200 did even better with 79.1Mbps, about 40Mbps faster than the D-Link, which scored 48.8Mbps. By far, the E4200 was the fastest on the 5GHz band, which is not a surprise because as we mentioned before, it's the first we've reviewed that supports the three-stream standard for this band.

On our 2.4GHz frequency tests, the router's scores were also among the tops on our charts. It scored 61.4Mbps in the close-range throughput test and 46.9Mbps in the long-range test. In the mixed-mode test, where the router was set to work with both N and legacy G wireless clients, it scored 57.6Mbps.

The Linksys E4200 also did very well in our stress test. It didn't disconnect once during the 48 hours of heavy data transferring between multiple clients. It offered great range, too, in our test, with about 290 feet for both 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands. This is the first time we've seen a router that offers similar ranges for both bands. Normally, the 5GHz band has a shorter range than the 2.4GHz band.

So far the E4200 is the fastest true dual-band router we've seen when it comes to wireless performance. On the other hand, the router's NAS performance, as we've always seen in routers that have network storage features, was mediocre. We tested it with a USB portable hard drive, and the scores were nowhere close to those of dedicated NAS servers. 

The router's write and read speeds were just slightly faster than 60Mbps. This means it's only suitable for casual small-file sharing among network computers. If you want to do heavy file sharing or media streaming, we'd recommend a dedicated NAS server, such as the Synology DS410. We didn't run into any problems during the review, but we did notice that the router got rather warm. It's recommended that it be set up in an open area.

The good: The Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Dual-Band Wireless-N Router offers true dual-band with 450Mbps on the 5GHz band; Gigabit Ethernet; fast throughput; a long range; NAS functionality; a nice set of networking features; and a good Web interface. The router also comes in a nice and compact design, and includes Cisco Connect, an intuitive software application that helps home users set up and manage their home wireless network with ease.

The bad: The Linksys E4200 doesn't offer 450Mbps throughput on the 2.4GHz band; its guest networking feature is limited to only 10 clients; the included desktop application doesn't allow for managing all of the router's settings, doesn't work well with the Web interface, and requires a live Internet connection for the initial setup. The router also runs warm, and its power adapter is bulky.

The bottom line: The Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Dual-Band Wireless-N Router is the first advanced router from Cisco that will make both novice and savvy users happy, thanks to its easy-to-use desktop application, comprehensive Web interface, great design, and stellar performance.

Source: cnet