U.S. Robotics claims a maximum throughput of 125Mb/sec for its USR018054. In practice, most of this bandwidth is theoretical, but it did prove one of the fastest units on test: even with WPA encryption, it transferred our 100MB of files in one minute, five seconds at close range, an impressive 12.9Mb/sec. Moving to medium range saw that drop to 8.8Mb/sec, but that’s more than enough to stream music and multimedia files.
With WPA encryption off, it also impressed in our long-range test, with files transferred in a shade under two minutes. However, WPA encryption increased time to five minutes, ten seconds. This equates to just 2.7Mb/sec, which is 2Mb/sec lower than the KCorp KLG-575.
The two aerials on the back of the unit are removable, so if you’re faced with range problems you could replace them with higher gain versions. There are four 10/100 Ethernet ports on the back plus a standard RJ-45 port for attaching to an Ethernet modem or WAN.
There’s good protection on offer too, with the standard WEP, MAC and WPA kept company by RADIUS. Although there isn’t the option to send email alerts of security events, the router keeps a firewall event log.
You can also clone MAC addresses, so it’s easy to replace existing hardware without disrupting ISP accounts. Ultimately, though, the KCorp is faster, cheaper and boasts a few more features, including URL and domain filtering, leaving the U.S. Robotics without an award.
Disclaimer: Some pages on this site may include an affiliate link. This does not effect our editorial in any way.
