Linksys announced shipment start of its new AC1200 class router.
The Linksys WRT1200AC AC1200 Dual-Band Wireless-AC Gigabit Router is an AC1200 class router running on a Marvell 1.3 GHz dual-core Armada 38X series CPU. It was announced at CES 2015 in January.
Like its WRT1900AC big brother, the WRT1200AC has Gigabit WAN (1) and switched LAN (4) ports, eSATA/USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports for storage and printer sharing and upgradable external dual-band antennas.
Linksys WRT1200AC
Hoping to not repeat the frustration surrounding its OpenWrt support for the WRT1900AC, Linksys says the open-source Wi-Fi driver for the WRT1200AC and WRT1900AC has been released to OpenWrt. According to the press release, "This driver has been incorporated into the latest open source firmware image snapshot, available here (Command line interface experience recommended)".
Linksys said support for the WRT1900AC and WRT1200AC have been rolled into the latest “Chaos Calmer” release from OpenWrt. "Chaos Calmer" is currently marked as a "Bleeding edge" release on the OpenWRT wiki.
The WRT1200AC supports Linksys’ "Smart Wi-Fi" feature set that includes support for a handful of feature-enhancement apps. OpenVPN is currently not supported, but is set to be via a firmware update in May.
The WRT1200AC is shipping now, listing for $179.99.