Synology, a company best known for its home and small office network attached storage (NAS) devices, is branching out with its first wireless router. The Synology Router RT1900ac is a high end 802.11ac Wi-Fi enabled router that is paired with some rather slick looking and useful software.
The RT1900ac supports the latest consumer grade networking tech including 802.11ac MU-MIMO (beam forming to up to six devices), 802.11n 256-QAM, and wired Gigabit Ethernet. The 5GHz band tops out at 1300 Mbps while the 2.4GHz “N” band tops out at 600 Mbps though note that a single device cannot use the combined “1900” Mbps bandwidth and even then inter-device links are limited to gigabit speeds or less.
The rear of the router hosts five Gigabit Ethernet ports (1 WAN, 4 LAN) and three physical antennas which means a max of 3×3 MIMO to wireless devices. The left side of the router hosts a WPS (wireless protected setup) button and a physical Wi-Fi on/off switch while the right side of the router features a single USB 3.0 port and a SD card reader.
Internally, the router is powered by a dual core processor running at 1 GHz paired with 256 MB of DDR3 memory. Synology rates the router at a maximum of 70 connected devices with as many as 40 concurrently transmitting data.
The operating system is called the Synology Router Manager and it can be accessed via a web interface or a mobile app called DS Router for Android and iOS.
Users are able to access the router using a GUI interface that is reminiscent of other Synology software. It supports parental controls (website blocking, scheduling, ect), application layer quality of service (QoS) on a per-device level, traffic management and bandwidth monitoring (per device as well as total bandwidth used). Users are able to initially setup the router using a web interface or the mobile app to guide them through setup.
The USB port (and SDXC card slot) can be used to share files and stream media to other devices. They can also be used to share a printer over the network or enable a mobile hotspot using a cellular modem dongle.
Interestingly, users can add additional software to their router from Synology. Optional applications from Synology’s Package Center allow using the router as a VPN, torrent box, RADIUS authentication server, DNS server, file share, and media server. Being able to extend the functionality of the router is nice to see and should be popular with enthusiasts though it does raise some security concerns.
This new router will be on display at CES 2016 and will be available in the US early next year for $150.
I’m interested to see the reviews on this as it certainly looks nice and the software looks much better than most!
Why so late covering the
Why so late covering the release of this router? I am eagre to see what security features Synology has implemented as this looks like a product offering good balance of features at reasonable price.
eventual performance aside,
eventual performance aside, can i assume that 150 is a fair market price for a router with this feature set?
Well, it did not seem too bad
Well, it did not seem too bad to me considering it's 802.11ac and most of those high end routers have been at least that much if not more IIRC. This is actually the first router I've considered upgrading to if the reviews hold up, for what that's worth.
yea..thats where my mind was
yea..thats where my mind was going. come on reviews! dont let me down now!
There are some reviews out
There are some reviews out already:
http://www.wegotserved.com/2015/10/13/review-synology-rt1900ac-wi-fi-router/
There are more if you look for them.
Availability is listed on the Synology product page which makes it clear that the RT1900ac is up for sale in some parts of the world already:
October for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Mid November for Europe.
Early 2016 (wish they could be more specific here) for USA, Canada and China.
I’ve been waiting on the Synology RT1900ac for a while now. I’ll likely jump on it as soon as it goes on sale stateside,…