Linksys WUMC710 Wireless-AC Wi-Fi 5GHz Universal Media Connector Bridge with 4-Port Switch

Cisco Linksys' WUMC710 AC Wi-Fi Universal Media Connector Bridge is Linksys' pre-draft 802.11ac companion bridge to the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Router AC 1750HD Video Pro EA6500 its newly released pre-draft 802.11ac router. While the Linksys media bridge did not give any noticeable performance boosts in streaming media, such as I witnessed with Buffalo's AirStation AC1300/N450 4-Port Gigabit Dual Band Wireless Ethernet Bridge WLI-H4-D1300 , Linksys' unit is a bit less expensive at $159.99 than the $179.99 Buffalo bridge, is very easy to set up, and is a decent way to connect devices such as gaming consoles, NASes, or smart TVs, to your home network.

What's a media bridge useful for? Say you have a smart TV in your downstairs entertainment room and a wireless router in your upstairs home office. You want Internet access for your smart TV, but it doesn't have built-in wireless connectivity. You can place a media bridge near that TV, connect the bridge wirelessly to the router upstairs, and then connect the TV to the bridge via an Ethernet cable. This will put the TV on your home network and bring it Internet access.

Specs
The WUMC710 has four Gigabit Ethernet ports?as most media bridges. The front panel includes a WPS (WiFi Protected Setup) button (for push-button connectivity with a Linksys Smart Wi-Fi router) and LEDs for connectivity, power, and wireless status.
The media bridge wirelessly pairs with the EA6500, allowing you to take advantage of the wired 802.11ac throughput speeds within your local network with devices connected directly to the Ethernet ports of the bridge. The device ships with a CD containing documentation, a quick install guide, a cat 5e cable and a power adapter.

It's a 5 GHz bridge with three internal antennas that deliver a 3x3 transmit /receive speed. The WUMC710 supports the pre-draft 802.11ac standard and wireless 802.11A and N. Since it's 5GHz, it won't work with single-band 2.4 GHz routers, which is OK, because the wireless connectivity if for connecting the bridge to the 5GHz-supported EA6500 router, not for connecting wireless clients. You can still connect wireless clients to the EA6500's 2.4 GHz band.

Setup
To set up and pair the Linksys bridge with the Linksys EA6500 router, it's best to initially place the media bridge near the router, (it can be moved later?Linksys recommends the device operates about five meters from the router).

Then, connect the power adapter and wait for the power LED to stop flashing?this took about 30 seconds in my testing.

Next, press the WPS button on the media connector and within 2 minutes, press the WPS button on the EA6500 router. When I did this in testing, the WPS button started to flash on the bridge and the illuminated Cisco logo on the EA6500 began slowly blinking?these flashing lights indicated that WPS pairing had commenced. After a few seconds the bride's WPS and wireless LEDs became a solid blue color?the pairing of the router and bridge had been made.

Testing
For testing, I connected a server to the bridge. I checked the server's network settings and was pleased to discover the server was part of the Linksys' EA6500 router's network via its Ethernet connection to the WUMC710.? I also checked the EA6500's Connected Devices list in the router's interface and saw the name of the server. My server also received Internet access through the bridge's connection.

One small issue to consider: If you make any wireless settings changes to the EA6500 router, you will have to pair the bridge and router again. I changed the network settings on the EA6500 by renaming the SSID for the 5GHz band. My server immediately lost connectivity on the network. The fix was easy enough: I just re-pressed the WPS button on the media bridge and then the router, which fixed the problem bringing my server was back online.

To test performance, I connected a Synology DS712+
NAS to a LAN port on both the router and then the bridge. I then wirelessly uploaded a 1.5GB file to the NAS from a laptop. Connected to the bridge via Ethernet, my NAS showed negligible upload speed difference as compared with the NAS only connected to the router. Both upload times were about 2 minutes uploading from a laptop to the NAS, with the bridged connection a little faster at 1 minute and 42 seconds. I expected faster speeds with the bridge connection, since it uses 802.11ac.

You may not see any performance gains with the bridge, even running both bridge and router in pre-draft 802.11ac mode. Still, the WUMC710 is very easy to set up and does a good job of to extending network connectivity to devices that wouldn't otherwise have it. The Linksys WUMC710 Wireless-AC Wi-Fi 5GHz Universal Media Connector Bridge with 4-Port Switch earns 3.5 out of 5 stars for networking hardware.

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