The fastest connection in the EAST

PERFECT FOR a family of internauts who spend most of their time streaming 4K or HD videos and music, the new router from Linksys – the Max-Stream AC5400 Tri-Band Wi-Fi (EA9500) – is powerful, fast and equipped to route Internet connections to family members without causing any bottleneck.
It is also very easy to set up and supports Linksys Smart Wi-Fi technology allowing you to remotely manage the router. Winning praise since its release last year, a good design and advanced technologies won it the title of Network World Best at consumer electronics and consumer technology tradeshow CES in 2016.
The Linksys EA9500 comes with Next Gen AC Wi-Fi technology, MU-MIMO, Tri-Band and eight high-powered external antennas that work together to deliver powerful Wi-Fi at combined speeds up to 5.3 Gbps. That means that all family members can use their Wi-Fi connection to play video games, listen to music, check email, shop, and stream 4K movies at the same time without any slowing down.

 

The EA9500 router is powered by a 1.4 GHz dual core processor, which makes it capable of handling a lot of traffic requests. It uses a tri-band of 2.4 GHz with a data transfer rate of 1,000 Mbps and two 5 GHz bands with 2,166 Mbps of data transfer each, thus providing 5,400 Mbps of speed.
The EA9500 uses latest Wi-Fi standard of 802.11ac Wave that includes the MU-MIMO technology. The MU-MIMO, which is multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output technology is essential to ensure high performance. It allows the router to communicate with multiple devices simultaneously so devices have less time to wait to get data from the Wi-Fi router.
Best of all, the tri-band design with powerful 4x4 AC Wi-Fi radios allows the EA9500 to deliver up to 8 simultaneous MU-MIMO streams so everybody in the house is happy, whether they’re streaming music and video or playing online games.
And the EA9500 comes with eight adjustable antenna to provide wide, omnidirectional coverage in a house or multi-storey house. It uses high-power Wi-Fi amplifiers and advanced beamforming technology to enhance the wireless coverage.

 

Moreover, the router has eight gigabit Ethernet ports for establishing a SOHO network or gaming network. That’s double the normal home router, which has only four.
The EA9500 has two USB ports – one USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0. You can connect the USB 2.0 to a shared printer easily and connect an external hard drive to the USB 3.0 port to conveniently provide shared storage for all devices in your house.
I found during the test that the router was very easy to set up. I simply connected it to my True Super Speed Fibre router and the EA9500 up and ready for use in a matter of minutes.

The router collected an IP from the True Super Speed Fibre and upgraded its firmware automatically. Then, I simply opened my web browser and typed “linksyssmartwifi.com” and the setup page came up. The router setup then guided me to name the router with the same SSID or the Wi-Fi name of the router. I used the same SSID and password of my existing router and the EA9500 option to give all three bands of router with the same name. Once I used the same SSID and password of my previous router with the EA9500, all my devices went back online.

 

During the test, we used several notebook computers, smart phones and IPTV boxes at the same time without any bottleneck. I streamed HD video using True TV box which is connected to Internet and streamed music using the JOOK app while also using Google Chromecast to stream HD movies from iflix.com. I didn’t experience even a single performance hiccup.
I tried downloading large files between computers connected to the same router and was pleased to see that the file transfers were fast. For example, I downloaded a 1.44 GB folder from a PC on the first floor to a notebook on the second floor and it took just 1.40 minutes to complete the download.
Since the EA supports the Smart Wi-Fi technology, I could use a web browser of an app to manage the router easily. Among other things, the browser and app let me see which devices were being connected to the router and allowed me to access and prioritise traffic to various devices.
The web browser can also be used to measure the connection speed. I measured and found that the router achieved the download speed of 35.08 Mbps and upload speed of 4.04 Mbps of my 30 MB/5 MB Fiber optic package.
The Linksys EA9500 router has a suggested retail price of Bt16,990.

Key Specs
- Wi-Fi Technology: AC5400 MU-MIMO Tri-band Gigabit, 1000+2166+2166 Mbps
- Network Standards: 802.11b, 802.11a/g, 802.11n, 802.11ac
- Wi-Fi Speed: AC5400 (N1000 + AC2166 + AC2166)
- Wi-Fi Bands: 2.4 and 5 GHz(2x) (simultaneous tri-band)
- Wi-Fi Range: Very Large Household
- Number of Ethernet Ports: 1x Gigabit WAN port, 8x Gigabit LAN ports
- Other Ports: 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 2.0 port, Power
- Antennas: 8x external adjustable antennas
- Processor: 1.4 GHz dual-core
- Wireless Encryption: 64/128-bit WEP, WPA2 Personal, WPA2 Enterprise
- Operation Modes: Wireless Router, Access Point (Bridge)
- Storage File System Support: FAT, NTFS, HSF+
- Security Features: WPA/WPA2, 128 bit AES link encryption, WEP
- Dimensions (LxWxH): 264.52 x 318.15 x 66.66 mm without antennas
- Weight: 1727.7 g