In a nutshell, the My Net N900 Central from Western Digital is a dual-band wireless Internet router with internal storage which allows it to double up as a media server. If you’re hoping to get some sort of network storage and the ability to serve media content without having to use a dedicated computer in your home, the My Net N900 Central will do just that for you.
The My Net N900 Central is the flagship product in Western Digital’s My Net router range. It comes with either a 1TB or 2TB internal Western Digital hard disk. Common features include 3×3 dual-band internal antennas delivering 450+450 Mbps Wi-Fi speeds, 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 1 USB port.
The similarly named My Net N900 is essentially the same thing without the internal storage.
The My Net N900 Central supports simultaneous dual-band, serving speeds of up to 450Mbps on both 2.4GHz band and 5GHz at the same time. Range amplifying technology and additional antennas provide larger coverage area while reducing interference, improving performance in multi-floor homes or those with multiple wireless devices.
Western Digital’s exclusive FasTrack Plus technology delivers smooth, accelerated HD streaming fr the best possible entertainment experience. Its “magic” just works, automatically using smart, real-time prioritization to manage network traffic.
Built-in storage brings you automatic backup using WD’s backup software. Apple’s Time Machine will also recognise and use this storage for its backup. Now it’s easy and convenient to back up all the PCs and Macs on your network.
As a media server, the My Net N900 Central functions as a DLNA server as well as iTunes server. Files are accessible over FTP and Western Digitals WD2go app.
So much for the features of the My Net N900 Central. Let’s open up the box and see what’s inside!
Inside the box, there is the My Net N900 Central itself, a AC power adapter with various international plug types, an Ethernet cable, a CDROM, some pieces of paper.
It’s nice that they provide various plug types, even though this is actually more useful for products that are mobile and likely to be taken overseas. I guess this makes it easier for Western Digital to move stocks between different parts of the world without themselves having to worry about plug types.
Here’s the My Net N900 Central product itself. It’s a simple plain looking device, black overall in colour, with some dot patterns on its top cover. There are a couple of LED indicators and a WPS button.
The back of the box has 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports, a port for the Internet uplink, a USB port, the DC power in, a real power switch, and a kensington lock slot.
The power button is a proper switch that can be pressed, and sits in or out so that you can easily tell if the switch is in the on or off position.
Finally, the bottom of the device reveals a cooling fan behind some ventilation slots.
With a spinning hard disk built into the My Net N900 Central, some form of active ventilation is required to keep the unit cool.
Setting up is pretty easy. The included CDROM contains an installer program for Windows “Easy Setup”. Interestingly, the CDROM is formatted in such a way that you’ll see different contents depending on whether you’re accessing it from a Windows or a Mac OS X computer. From a Mac OS X computer, you’ll see a “My Net Setup” program which, unfortunately, is not used to configure the My Net N900 Central.
I primarily use a Mac. Instead of using an installer program, I’ve to setup the My Net N900 Central via the web. My Mac doesn’t have an Ethernet port either. The first thing I need to do is to connect to the My Net N900 Central’s default SSID “WesternDigital”. If your computer has an Ethernet port, then just connect to one of the four LAN ports on the router. Next, open up a browser to http://wdrouter/ (or http://192.168.1.1/).
The screenshots above take you through the setup steps. The last screenshot shows the “notifications” list, where the My Net N900 Central tells you about outstanding tasks that you should take care off. For example, changing your Admin password is one of them.
The “Dashboard” web management user interface is intuitive and pretty easy to navigate around. In fact, it’s surprisingly quite a joy to use, partly also because it’s fast to go from screen to screen.
The only glitch I’ve encountered is the the My Net N900 Central incorrectly guessed my uplink speed. It determined my uplink to be just 512Kbps. I’m not sure how the box figures out the speed, but I tested on two different networks, both having plenty (at least 25Mbps) of uplink Internet bandwidth, and both were auto-detected at 512Kbps. The drop-down selection for manually setting the uplink speed only has predefined speeds of up to 1Mbps, but I can manually set a higher value. The correct uplink speed setting is needed for the FasTrack Plus QoS to properly prioritise Internet traffic.
There was a firmware update available for this review unit. I performed the firmware update, and after a few minutes, the router was up and working with the new firmware.
The nice thing about consumer appliances like the My Net N900 Central is that they just work. I’m a Mac user. Time Machine immediately recognised the storage on the My Net N900 Central as a candidate backup target. iTunes immediately recognised the My Net N900 Central as an iTunes server. Everything just works beautifully.
I have a Western Digital TV Live Streaming Media Player at home. (It’s a set top box for streaming content to the TV.) It discovers the My Net N900 Central and plays video content from it very well.
With the USB port on the back of the My Net N900 Central, you can connect more external storages to the unit, and make them available to any device on your network just like the internal hard disk. You can also connect a printer, and have the printer shared over the network. Printer sharing requires installing additional Western Digital software. You’d need a USB hub, of course, if you want to connect multiple external hard disks or printers to the My Net N900 Central.
The USB port, unfortunately, is a USB 2.0 port. It seems that since everyone’s headed towards USB 3.0 nowadays, it would have been nice to have a faster port on the My Net N900 Central. Of course, the performance benefit from the faster port may be questionable if you consider the realistic performance limitations of hard disks and wireless networks.
The wireless performance (speed and range) of the My Net N900 Central is not its strongest point. I found the speed to be average, even when the box just sites 10cm away from my notebook. While I would still say the My Net N900 Central’s performance will suffice for most users, it’s not the solution if wireless performance is your top priority.
The guest network feature is useful when you want to give visitors Internet access, but not allow them to access other devices on your own network. Many users often share files in their own home network without password controls. Now, when a friend visits you, you can let him or her use your wireless Internet access, without worrying about exposing all the content in your network.
WPS push button setup, UPnP, personal cloud with WD2go app, IPv6 and other features are nice additions to the rich feature set of the My Net N900 Central.
Conclusion
The My Net N900 Central is a great storage router solution packed with rich features and yet remains very easy to use.
Pros:
- Integrated storage with DLNA, iTunes Server and Time Machine compatibility
- Rich feature set
- Easy to use
Cons:
- Average performance (speed)
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