Wireless Reviews

Routing Performance

Routing performance for the 320N using our standard test method is summarized in Table 1, along with the 610N's test results for comparison. WAN to LAN measured 145.1 Mbps, while LAN to WAN came in at 165.5 Mbps. Since neither is anywhere near Gigabit speed, it's obvious that the processors are the limiting factor for routing speed.

Both the 320N and 610N maxed out the Maximum Simultaneous Connections test at 200 connections.

Test Description	WRT320N Throughput - (Mbps)	WRT610N Throughput - (Mbps)
WAN - LAN	145.1	136
LAN - WAN	165.5	157
Total Simultaneous	159.0	143
Maximum Simultaneous Connections	200	200
Firmware Version	1.0.01	1.000.00 B17

Table 1: Routing throughput

Figure 4 is a composite plot of the three routing tests, which shows nice, steady routing throughput. Use the Router Charts to see how the 320N stacks up against other routers.

Figure 4: WRT320N Routing throughput composite plot

Wireless Features

As with its routing features, the 320N's wireless features are Linksys standard. Figure 5 shows the Basic Wireless settings once you switch from the default Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) mode to the Manual setting mode. With a single radio, you must choose between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.

Network Modes for the 5 GHz radio include Disabled, Mixed (default), Wireless-A only and Wireless-N only Network Modes, while the 2.4 GHz radio shows Disabled, Mixed (default), BG-Mixed, Wireless-B only, Wireless-G only and Wireless-N only.

Figure 5: Basic wireless settings

Channel and Channel Width selection is simple. You can select channels only when in 20 MHz only Channel Width mode. When the Auto (20 or 40 MHz) Channel Width mode is selected, the channel selector is greyed-out in the 5 GHz band and forced to Auto in 2.4 GHz. The 5 GHz radio can be set to channels 36, 40, 44, 48, 149, 153, 157 and 161.

I successfully made a WPA2 / AES connection to the 320N using the WPS PIN method supported by my standard Intel 5300 AGN WiFi Link test client using the Intel PROSet Wireless Connection Utility (version 12.2.0.0).

Figure 6 shows the Advanced Wireless Settings that include Transmit Rate and AP Isolation, which keeps wireless clients from communicating with each other, but not Power settings. Note that the Frame Burst control missing from the 400N is back.

Figure 6: Advanced Wireless Settings