The iconic blue and black WRT line of routers from Linksys, which was largely discontinued in 2004, is making a comeback in the form of the WRT 1900AC, the company announced at CES 2014 in Las Vegas. The new dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi router is aggressively designed and has all the essential features for the demanding modern user.
It features one USB 3.0 port, one eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, one Gigabit WAN port, four Gigabit LAN ports, and four external and removable antennas. The beast is powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM processor, and has 128MB of flash storage as well as 256MB of DDR3 RAM. It supports up to 1300Mbps on the 5GHz frequency band and up to 600Mbps on the 2.4 GHz frequency band.
According to PCWorld, all four antennas will be used by the router to determine the best combination, and the one which delivers the least throughput will be turned off.
Just like the original WRT line, the company is working with the OpenWRT community to have an alternative open source firmware (like DD-WRT, Open WRT, and Tomato) ready for WRT 1900AC by the time it starts shipping. This will give users the flexibility to build custom software builds, introduce new features, and more.
The new WRT 1900AC router is designed to be stackable and weighs approximately 5 pounds. It has a list price of $300, and according to the company, it will be available this spring.