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Western Digital's My Net routers prioritize bandwidth usage for gaming, Netflix, or Skype

Western Digital's My Net routers prioritize bandwidth usage for gaming, Netflix, or Skype

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Western Digital debuted a new line of wireless routers today, which automatically give more bandwidth to important activities.

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Western Digital My Net
Western Digital My Net

Western Digital announced a new branch of products for the company today, the My Net family of wireless routers. WD is known mostly for hard drives and set-top boxes, and the My Net products combine those devices with a router that intelligently prioritizes bandwidth for whatever you want to do most. The company has developed FastTrack technology, which tries to figure out the activity that's most important to you at any given moment — an in-progress Skype call, or an Xbox Live gaming session — and diverts bandwidth away from other things to make sure the most crucial experience is a good one. That means you won't have to stop your movie download in order to stream Netflix stutter-free; the download just slows down while your movie is playing. It works across devices, too, so whether you're on your phone, tablet, or TV the My Net can make sure your priorities are taken care of. FastTrack works automatically, or you can program it yourself if you'd rather have your Netflix streaming take precedence over your kid's Netflix movie. Of course, plenty of routers have similar QoS systems already, but WD's trying to make the process more transparent and more configurable — the company said people's internet issues are far more often the router's fault than the ISP's, and it wants to make it easier to manage.

In keeping with WD's goal of making your router smarter and simpler, the company also designed a super-simple wizard for setting up a router, changing network settings, and the like – hopefully gone are the days of entering 192.168.1.1 and dealing with infuriatingly clunky interfaces just to add a password to your Wi-Fi network.

There are four different My Net routers being debuted today. The My Net N900 Central is the flagship device, and in addition to a router it's also a network-attached 1TB or 2TB hard drive — you can access files over the internet via WD's web or mobile apps, or set a device on your local network to automatically back up to the drive. The My Net N900 adds on a set-top box experience like the WD TV Live Hub, letting you stream music and movies from a handful of different apps. The My Net N600 and N750 are both simply routers, varying only in their maximum data range. They range in price from $79.99 for the My Net N600 to $349.99 for the N900 Central with 2 TB of storage.