Review: Synology RT2600ac Wireless Router

“In a world, where enterprise and consumer technology seems to merge more more every day,” you now find yourself faced with more options than ever before when it comes to the tech that surrounds us. Now, if only I could express the deep movie guy voice in my opening text any further, you’d feel the true dramatic build up that the product we are about to discuss truly deserves. Sadly, you cannot, therefore I will continue with words and try my best to express what we have learned from testing Synology’s latest AC router, the RT2600ac.

You could imagine that a place like this can get a little crazy when it comes to the tech that runs it. Now imagine the similar tech we run alongside it while testing devices out like this, as they are expected to get along with various scenarios and perform well despite the many many frequencies of wireless technology that radiates our offices every day. Synology was our latest contestant to this challenge and we were blown away by how much we loved this router.

First off, we will begin by explaining how easy it was to set the router up, right out of the box. There is a simple to understand foldout that gives you a user-friendly step by step instructional that walks you through getting this taken care of. You start off with attaching the four antennas, plugging your router between your modem and a PC via ethernet and then slapping the power adapter into the wall. Then you just have to hit the power button on the router. From there, you go to https://router.synology.com or https://192.168.1.1 to access your router and start the wizard.

The wizard it straight forward for the most part. You start off by creating an admin username and password. From there, you setup the name of your wireless network (the SSID) and password. Make sure you set a strong one to protect yourself from drive-by hack attempts. Las Vegas is bad for this as we like to host two of the biggest conventions out there (Blackhat and Defcon). You could always set a slightly easier one for the guest network if you want, so your friends don’t have to know your secret passphrase or choke at hearing what it is. Then you tell it if you are using it as your main router or an access point (which would be an expensive yet effective extension), and if you want to have external access to the admin screen (Synology Router Manager, or SRM) from outside of the network. Lastly, you choose your IP configuration settings. This is usually Auto IP for most consumer level accounts.

It will begin to set itself up from there and walk you through the progress with a percentage of completion screen until it tells you that you are ready to go and gives you a button to launch the admin screen with. Once you are there, you login using the admin credentials you just created. The SRM admin screen is very clean and takes the form of a desktop as an interface. This is warming compared to the typical two-frame HTML structure that most routers take.

You have four icons located on the “desktop”, including Network Center, Control Panel, Package Center and SRM Help. These are just the icons you start off with to give you quick links to the most frequently used screens. To view some of the other options, you would click on the white icon at the top-left which will darken the screen and overlay a menu with all installation features and applications. Here you can access your Synology account, storage and printers and so forth (once these options are added later on).

You can also drag these items in the menu over to your desktop to add them as icons there if you want, so you can customize the look of things to whatever fits your

In the shot above, you can see how right away that after opening Network Center, you are already confronted with instant analytics about what is going on inside. Our example above is slightly different than what you see as we were having all sorts of fun with it at the time, setting is up as a main router vs access point vs a device on a network (set as main router) yet delivering its own network separately. You might as well go all out right? So at the time of taking the screenshot, we had no internet being sent to it (you would normally see a green connection confirmation where it says limited connection for us).

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Current network speeds and resources as well as device list are all there in the initial screen. This is great when you just want to login and get a quick update of how everything is going and what devices/users are riding the connection. You can also see the toggle option for “Wi-Fi Bands of Smart Connect”, which allows the router to automatically connect devices to the best network (ie, 2.4GHz vs 5GHz) suited for them as they join.,

From there, it is straightforward with your typical setting options, including wireless, internet, port forwarding, local network (LAN), parental controls, traffic control, security and operation modes.

The options that Synology gives you fulfills what you would normally expect from a router and then some. You are also presented with extended information and features that allow you to take your network to the next level.

From the Control Panel screen, you can dive deeper, allowing yourself to adjust settings such as User credentials and who has what to which shared folders (attached storage). You can setup your storage and file services options as well as various other services, notifications and device/system settings, etc.

This isn’t a router for the weak of heart. Not because it is hard to work with–since that definitely is not the case. It is because you have so much more flexibility to play with. It isn’t just a device to connect everything in your house together with and give it all internet access.

You can now run your own file server from the router and control access to it from SRM, on top of it all. Then, throw in all the various optional services and add-ons from things like the package center and you have so much more power at your fingertips. This might scare a beginner away since they may not be used to seeing any of this. They may just want a basic router with WPS and off they go. However, for the strong of heart, the software alone already has many brownie points built up to cash in with.

Wait, speaking of extra features, did I say package center? Yes I did and it is exactly what it sounds like (especially if you are a Linux fan). From here you can install addons from both Synology and third-party developers. You can extend your file-sharing abilities, add some VPN magic to your setup, DNS Server and more.

Intrusion Prevention is a package you can get your hands on that helps extend your protection from unauthorized attempts of access or attacks. You can trigger notifications, view statistics, review the event log as well as even show where on the map the event originated from. So get your ban hammer ready.

What do you think so far? At this point, we were already salivating as now we got to actually play with it all. We added the router to our network of things and started to stress test it on both wired and Wi-Fi to see how it handled such a busy environment. It wound up doing fantastic and we may even move as far as creating a file server later on (I’ll make sure to update if we do). One thing that will really determine everything is long-term use without having to power cycle it or any reasons. So far, we have had it for a few weeks now and have had no troubles in this area, so it has done nothing but earn additional brownie points thus far (again, if anything pops up, I’ll make sure to update the story).

Speed is consistent and reliable, giving us everything we need both over the air and hard-connected. Range is also great as we have devices connecting from a few hundred feet away through walls. Average connection strength seems to drop down to 40-50% once you get that far. This is quite impressive.

We loaded it up with a few dozen hungry devices and systems, including PCs used for transfer of large files (like freshly encoded videos), HD IP cameras and even an Xbox One. In a place like this, we cannot sacrifice speed as we depend so much on it. The only thing we take a hit on is upload as it’s capped on the network to make sure no one person is making it difficult for anyone else to get something out there in a timely manner. The result was more than perfect, especially if you’re a consumer looking for something solid. The included graphic here shows you the results of a speed test we took on a connected laptop from a good distance. We got a consistent performance across the newly created network and it held strong as we put a heavy load on.

For all of those file storage abilities, you have the option of both a USB attached device (preferably an external hard drive filled with delicious TBs of space of course) or an SD card (there is a slot on the front of the router). This is also needed for when you start installing packages on the router because it is limited on space by itself.

It’s a good thing they opted for the SD slot since this might have poked at certain users who weren’t looking for any special file storage solutions. Instead, just slap an SD card in and use it for packages and that’s it. Whatever floats your boat, they seem to have thought about it all.

Speaking of physical features of the router, it has been so exciting to talk about what the router can accomplish, we haven’t even covered what it looks like physically.

The overall design of the router is consistent of what you’d expect to find in a router of its kind. You have a black shell that lays flat and features four powerful-looking antennas that demand attention (two in the back and one on each side). As mentioned, the front-side features an SD card slot for expanded storage.

The left side features a USB 3.0 port with an eject button (so you don’t unplug the drive while it is being written to). The right side features a WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) and Wi-Fi button. The top contains all of your status LEDs and that back is where the rest of the connectivity takes place. On the back, you have your power button, AC input for power, recessed reset button (for resetting the router to factory settings/condition), additional USB port, WAN input (coming from your internet source such as a modem) and four LAN ports for connecting wired devices with via ethernet.

It comes with a power adapter and an average length ethernet cable to get you started with. So you should have everything you need unless you don’t already have a cable to go between any of your wired devices.

Like the Nighthawk and every other hardcore AC router, it truly does look powerful and pleasing. Even better, it is affordable. The current average low price seems to be around $239.99-$249.99, which places it well among the competitors.

Our Conclusion

The router does a very good job of selling itself. It looks cool, but it’s what’s inside that makes it worth every penny of the price. An excellent firmware filled with options that will satisfy both the beginner and the advanced-level user. If you depend on a reliable connection, maximizing your speeds across your network and being able to track everything to the tiniest of detail; this is a good option for you. Now how about an applause for the security features and other additional add-on packages! We were taken by the RT2600ac and now have an even bigger appreciation for Synology. Another episode of seeing the worlds of enterprise and consumer get cozy with each other.

*Average price is based on the time this article was published

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