Conclusion and Wrap Up
ASUS RT-N66U Router
The ASUS RT-N66U is a great piece of hardware that would look right at home sitting on your media shelf next to any high end components. The firmware and functionality built into the router and accessible through a well thought out and the easily usable UI is top notch. After years of the same old minimalist user interface in routers, it’s a breath of fresh air to see something that looks clean and easy to configure/navigate even to someone who isn’t a network engineer. The router is extremely easy to setup and can be out of the box and up and running in just a few minutes with little more than a few clicks. Even with this layer of ‘easy’, there are lots of powerful capabilities lurking under the hood for the advanced user. Things like one button push Wi-Fi setup with WPS, router management and shared storage access through a Smartphone with AiCloud, automatic 3G/4G failover for a backup internet connection and full QoS/Traffic monitoring are just a few of the many capabilities that put the ASUS RT-N66U’s firmware head and shoulders above the competition.
When it came to wired connectivity, the ASUS router excelled in just about every area and beat up on the Apple Airport Extreme in almost every speed test. In some cases the wired speed through the LAN/WAN ports on the RT-N66U matched or even exceeded the speeds seen between the two test boxes connected directly with a CAT6 crossover cable.
Wireless was mixed bag with the 5 GHz networking outperforming the Apple Airport in most tests, whereas the 2.4 GHz performance lagged behind the Apple in some cases. ASUS’ claim of “900 Mbps” performance (hence the “Wireless-N900” branding) is misleading in that they mean you can get up to 450 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network and up to 450 Mbps on the 5 GHz Wi-Fi network simultaneously, but you are not going to 900 Mbps speeds to single device. Even then, none of my tests came anywhere near 450 Mbps, with the fastest speed I saw in any test weighing in at less than half of that with 234.3 Mbps. The “4 Gigabit LAN” is also somewhat misleading. Yes, there are 4, 1 Gigabit LAN ports, there is not a LAN network with speeds up to 4 Gigabits. You gotta love marketing…
All in all, the ASUS RT-N66U is an excellent router with a full feature set that’s definitely worth a look. I’m seriously thinking of swapping out my beloved Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with Tomato firmware in a second for this router. The only caveat being you shouldn’t be surprised when you don’t get the Wi-Fi speeds that are advertised.
ASUS RT-N66U Router
ASUS PCE-N10/PCE-N15 PCI-E Wireless-N Adapters
I’m not really sure what to think about the PCE-N10. The card can found for just about $20 online and seems like a great deal. The included software and form factor are excellent, particularly if you are looking for something nice and compact to tuck into a small form factor machine or a Home Theater PC. Unfortunately, the card just doesn’t perform very well.
The limitation of only being able to connect to 2.4 GHz networks hurts the card in my opinion. The box and marketing material claim you should be able to get up to 150 Mbps speed with this card, but the best I was able to get out of it a burst speed of 74.6 Mbps and only 22.5 Mbps average speeds, and that was with the card and router antennas just a few feet from each other.
I would have loved to have been able to test the PCE-N15 as well, to see if the dual antennas helped at all, but the fact that the PCE-N15 card is limited to the 2.4 GHz range as well makes me think I wouldn’t have gotten any nearer to the 300 Mbps claims on the PCE-N15 box than I got to the 150 Mbps speeds on the PCE-N10 box.
ASUS USB-N53 Wi-Fi Adapter
The ASUS USB-N53 Wi-Fi Adapter shares the nice styling of the RT-N66U. Certainly not the smallest USB attached Wi-Fi adapter out there, it appears to be sturdy enough to hold up to normal use even when tossed in a laptop bag. The adapter is plug and play, and when you add in ASUS’ great WLAN Control Center software and WPS functionality and you have a simple to set up and easy to use Wi-Fi adapter that can have you surfing the internet in no time. The included flexible adapter is a nice addition as we all know how easy it is to knock off and even bend USB attached devices sticking out of a notebook.
When paired with the ASUS RT-N66U router, the wireless performance of the adapter held up well against the Intel Centrino Ultimate N card in most tests, besting it in some tests and falling behind in others. The adapter fared better when paired with the ASUS RT-N66U router as opposed to the Apple Airport and the USB-N53 is a pretty good USB Wi-Fi adapter. I was a bit disappointed by the speeds overall compared to the claims of 300 Mbps. The fastest speeds I saw was just nearly half that, with most speed tests clocking in under 100 Mbps.
The Intel Centrino adapter can be found online for about the same price as the USB-N53 and if you have the option to add the Intel Centrino adapter into your laptop on your own, it might be worth going with that just so you don’t have an extra piece of gear you need to deal with. But, if you’re in the market for a USB Wi-Fi adapter, you could certainly do worse than the USB-N53.
ASUS USB-N66 Dual-band Wireless-N900 USB Adapter
The ASUS USB-N66 Dual-band Wireless-N900 USB adapter was a pleasant surprise. I’ll admit when I first pulled the adapter out of the box I thought the shape was little more than a gimmick, but ASUS knows what they’re doing. The ‘patented orthogonal antenna design’ really helps grab onto Wifi signals and get the best out of them. Couple that with the great software included that helps you get connected easily as well as act as an Access Point for other devices to connect and you have a great package.
The USB-N66 was by far the fastest adapter in our testing, with many tests climbing above 170 Mbps and some even reaching over 230 Mbps. Of course, the adapter is supposed to be able to get up to 450 Mbps, so I was a bit disappointed that when paired with the ASUS RT-N66U I didn’t get closer to the marketing numbers. The only other reservation I have with it stems from the shape. While it certainly seems to help the signal, I really don’t see the adapter as being ‘mobile’ and dragged around with a laptop. Due to its size and shape, it just doesn’t fit right in a laptop bag.
That being said, if you’re looking for a Wifi adapter that will be hooked up to a desktop or stuck on desk most of the time, I wouldn’t look any further that the USB-N66. You can grab the USB-N66 online for around $60 with rebates and it’s well worth it.
ASUS USB-N66 Adapter
Final Thoughts
This was a big review and going forward we'll likely be reviewing a single router or network adapter in each review. We will likely use some of the data from this review as baselines for future tests. As this is our first review with our testing methods, there's a chance we might see some tweaks or adjustments to it in the future. If there's something you'd like to see us test or something you think we tested that isn't interesting, just let us know in the comments!
Chris, nice review. Looks
Chris, nice review. Looks like a pretty nice router. I may have to pick one up to play with.
I had a few questions you might be able to answer:
– Can you lock down the admin page to only work over wired? I see a place to open WAN access to it but not WIRED/WIRELESS.
– Were you able to try DYNDNS?
– Any tests on parental control / keyword filters? I only ask because I know a number of routers in the past flat out didn’t work. I know a lot of parents that struggle with this specific point 🙂
The Network Services Filter looks like an interesting feature but looks like you have to custom create a rule if you want to do it by machine (IP).
I did kind of laugh at the “Famous Game List” on the port forwarding. Kind of surprised the Famous Server List didn’t include IMAP or HTTPS. Not a huge deal.
I did notice on their demo that the QOS is system-wide so you can’t select QOS rules but device which kind of stinks. I guess a bandwidth limit tool like on Tomato would be the better way to deal with that possibly.
Nice job. Look forward to more networking stuff on PCPer.
Hey thanks! Glad you enjoyed
Hey thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. To answer your questions, I don't recall seeing any way to lock the router admin down by Wi-Fi, just by WAN.
As for DynDNS and parental controls, I didn't actually get to dive too deep into them. Due to the huge amount of tests and time constraints we couldn't dive into every available firmware option. I do plan in future reviews that are for single adapters or routers I'll try to dig a little bit deeper into software/firmware options.
I use Tomato at home as well and love their QoS and bandwidth monitoring capabilities, hopefully more vendors start expanding out on those.
I have the ASUS RT-N66U
It
I have the ASUS RT-N66U
It does support DYNDNS & DNS-O-Matic which is fantastic. With DNS-O-Matic you can have the RT-N66U update OpenDNS and any other DynDNS provider. DNS-O-Matic acts as a DynDNS forwarder in a sense.
You can see the interface here: http://event.asus.com/2012/nw/dummy_ui/en/Advanced_ASUSDDNS_Content.html
Whаt’s up, this weekend is
Whаt’s up, this weekend is good designed for me, since this occasion i am reading this great informative paragraph here at my residence.
My web page … meditation classes Vancouver
this will make a great
this will make a great addition to the site. Please test the WNDR4700 and if possible contact netgear and tell them to add idle spindown to the drives, I really want get one but am not sure since many storage routers in the past (cough… apple), have been so full of fail that it has given storage routers a bad image.
Also if possible cover info on 3rd party firmware (would like to avoid routers that have no hope of 3rd party firmware).
I think we have a Netgear or
I think we have a Netgear or two waiting to be testing, I just don't remember what model. I'll check when I get back next week and if we don't have that I'll see if we can get one from Netgear.
Good idea on the 3rd party firmware. I don't know if time would permit us to test a bunch of 3rd party firmware on routers, but I'll try to mention if it's an option on each router going forward. Doing a bit of googling, it looks like the RT-N66U can take some versions of Tomato, but I'm not sure it'd be worth it since you'd probably lose all the other functionality that ASUS has built in. Will really depend on your use case.
Nice review! And welcome
Nice review! And welcome aboard Chris! I really like the ASUS RT-N66U’s style and performance, definitely considering replacing my current router.
Still disappointed with the data throughput on wifi compared to the advertised speeds, unfortunately it seems like common practice these days. I’m curious to see what the test environment and setup they use to get these benchmarks in the first place.
But as you said, gotta love that marketing. Big numbers = £££ apparently
That has pretty much always
That has pretty much always been a problem with wifi and it gets worst each year, with the latest standard 802.11c they will claim 1.2 Gbit/s to 1.6 Gbit/s, but in reality, benchmark at around 170 mbit/s to 220 mbit/s.
Since 802.11b, the delta between advertised speed and actual speed has steadly grown, in the past you could get around 60% advertised speed as a best case, and now it is down to around 25% advertised speeds
Yeah, this is kinda a pet
Yeah, this is kinda a pet peeve of mine honestly. These advertised speeds remind me of the claims from the old broadband providers back in the day. I mean, my car can travel 1000 mph too, assuming I drop it from low earth orbit, but I'll never see those speeds.
I'm not really sure how they come up with the 300/450 Mbps 'up to' speeds when I couldn't even get close to half that with the router and adapter sitting right next to each other. I think I'm going to see that with every vendor though.
I have to admit some
I have to admit some responsibility here… I was the Sr. Product Manager for the USR x2 consumer product line back in the 90’s and the whole “56k” thing kind of started this.. 🙂
As you said though, if you happened to live at the head end, and plugged your modem directly into the head end modem, you might be able to get 56k so who was I to say you didn’t have that setup? 😉
I do think for this crowd, focusing on the Tomato, DD-WRT and other “enthusiast” class stuff is a good fit. I could really care less about the latest EA4500/6500 from Cisco. I can read 10 reviews about those one from the candy-store reviewers out there.
I’ve been running Tomato for at least 5-6+ years. Originally on the WRT-54G then the 54GL. I have it on a Netgear 3500L right now. I’ve also been playing around with M0n0wall (on a WatchGuard Firewall), Untangle (on a PC), DD-WRT, OpenWRT, PFSense and a few others.. Still searching for a solution that fits my needs (3 kids, 10 computers, 2 servers, 2 rokus, 2 apple TVs, 2 google TVs, and more).. QOS, Bandwidth limits, parental control (that work), bandwidth monitoring, networking monitoring are all things I’m interested in.
Network Monitoring in particular is becoming more and more of an issue. With every device online and wanting to “phone home”, I want a better idea of what is going on and who is talking to what. That may not be something average users want but done correctly, a powerful router with the right features would be a huge seller. Most of the stuff on the market has just sucked for the past 10 years with the only improvements really being new WiFi standards.
With the home network being the backbone for a huge portion of our life now, its crazy that more innovation hasn’t come out in this space. If you let Comacast (intentionally spelled), AT&T and other ISPs have their way, they’ll reach their greasy fingers all the way into the home and charge and monitor everything. No thanks. You can plug in your data pipe to my outside wiring and go away..
I think when they make claims
I think when they make claims such as 450mbit/s they mean, provided you can harness the power of magic while transferring your data, then you will reach 450mbit/s
I don’t even know how they get away with it, many companies (eg small net builder) have tried to set up best possible case scenarios for a wifi speed test (including disabling as many things as possibly that can lead to a bandwidth or processing overhead, and still never manage to come even close to the advertised speeds). Isn’t it false advertising if advertised results are impossible to to achieve is real world or even laboratory conditions?
Imagine if wifi style claims were accepted in other ways of life.
Buy our large 18 inch pizza!for $12:(opens box and it only has one 4 inch slice of pizza)
Buy our overpriced high speed internet service: (ends up being comcast, which is Latin for authentic 9600 baud experience)
How would you like a 70 inch OLED 4K TV. (buys it and wonders how they were able to fit a 70 inch tv in a 20 inch box, you then open it to find another box containing a 10 inch 100ms response time TFT LCD display)
Yes Razor it is however
Yes Razor it is however companies have done it for a long time. WAY back when, the whole monitor industry was taken to court over “Viewable” area. Claims that a monitor was 15″ when it had 14 inches of viewable glass caused that.
At USR, we had to put an asterix on the box and tell people that 53.3 was the highest you could get because of FCC regs. In our case we were claiming connection speed and not throughput. Yeah, splitting hairs but there was a difference.
I think in the case of WiFi there is no possible way to put out a claim that would apply to everyone. Every situation would have different interference etc..
The numbers used for WiFi,
The numbers used for WiFi, like 450mbps and for LAN, 1000mbps are the maximum symbol rate for the interface, not the maximum throughput. You have to add in protocol overhead, packet loss and retransmission, and then you end up with a much lower maximum throughput. You also have to take into consideration that on WiFi the clients must check every once in awhile to allow others to talk so they don’t step on each other. Also if the router is not in WiFi-n only mode, it must broadcast periodically at WiFi-b or WiFi-g speeds to let potential clients know that it exists, which will bring down the maximum even further.
A network standard can have a maximum, even if it is unreachable in the real world, but there is no way for the standard makers to know what typical performance will end up being, and it will vary for situation to situation.
It would be nice if router makers gave maximum and typical real world performance numbers on the box, but that seems like a mixed bag.
I’ve owned the N66U for about
I’ve owned the N66U for about 6 months now and it rocks. Data throughput on the wired computers on our home network (all are Gb LAN equipped)when transferring say a 1.5Gb movie are a sustained 105mbps. The wireless computers (2 story cape, 3 wireless computers in the upstairs bedrooms) stay at constant 150-200mbps (they have different adapters). With my daughter &son-in-law currently staying with us there are usually 3 computers (2 wired- my gaming rig & the HTPC, a wireless N 150 in a bedroom), 2 iPad 2’s, 4 Android 4G phones and 2 printers all running thru the RT-N66U and it hasn’t hiccuped once.
This forum on Tim Higgin’s site has lots of info and alternative firmware–http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37 .
Sam
Great review Chris… I have
Great review Chris… I have a Rt-n66u up & running & cannot complain one iota. Well… maybe one. How in God’s name did you ever get the stand clipped into the back wall mount holes. ?? For the love of me i tried, but am scared if you apply alot of pressure it will break. It will not stand securely with the stand. I rather have it standing so it will cool better. Any suggestions…? TIA Rick, Montreal Canada
I was able to snap the stand
I was able to snap the stand into the base. I inserted the tabs for the stand into the holes, then pressed up (towards the end with the connections) firmly on the stand at the point where the tabs were located. I held the router cradled in my hands with my thumbs resting on the stand right at the tabs. By gradually increasing pressure, the stand did snap into place without breaking. 🙂
Yup, did the same thing!
I
Yup, did the same thing!
I feared breaking the bracket by applying so much pressure, but it did snap into place eventually. Very sturdy.
Asus PCE-N15
I can confirm
Asus PCE-N15
I can confirm it’s not just that you got a bad unit. I’ve owned this adapter for months and it seems to have an issue when used in an x16 slot.
It will work, but it sometimes “craps out”.
Found this on the Asus site…
P8Z77-V PRO (FAQ)
Due to hardware limition of the Realtek chip on PCE-N15 wireless card, PCE-N15 wireless card will function in PCIe x1 slot only. Therefore, if you would like to use PCE-N15 wireless card in your system, please plug the card into PCIe 1x slot.
I just bought this router and
I just bought this router and personally like it except tha it can share locally the USB storage to a maximum 5 clients pc. Or am I missing something? please help. thanks.
I just got the RT-N66U v.b1.
I just got the RT-N66U v.b1. This is an awesome router. The print server was the easiest set up I have ever had. My previous router started to have glitches through the switch so I replaced it with this one. I have never paid anything in the $200 range for a router before….but boy am I glad I did.
The web interface is fantastic! The Quick Set up was easy to follow and intuitive.
I did some product review before purchasing and decided to stay away from any of the routers that were AC (RT-AC66U)due to the lack of standards and available devices. This router was, in my opinion, the “best of the best” and affordable. I’m a little concerned about the heat management of the device as it does seem to run very warm. It does come with a 2 year warranty, so I would hope heat management was considered. I really think some type of small internal fan would have been a good idea.
Anyway, If anyone were to ask me about which wireless router to buy, this would be my first recommendation. Thumbs up to ASUS.
hi can you test the ASUS
hi can you test the ASUS RT-N66U agents de new apple airport extreme from june 10:th???
please do I would like to know wish is the best for a big house with 4 stories and every floor is 10 by 9 meters.
Is there any way to setup a
Is there any way to setup a USB drive connected to the ASUS RT-N66U so that it appears to computers on the same network as a mounted drive with a drive letter? The idea is to use the USB drive as a network file share and also as network backup device. It doesn’t look like the ftp or the media server options do that, but it’s tantalizingly close. Any ideas you have are appreciated.
Please ignore my question
Please ignore my question about mapping a drive letter for backup purposes. Got it going now.
Which DDNS-services does the
Which DDNS-services does the router support? I can not find any picture of an opened popup “Server”, where i could see the different entries.
Is there also one offering to use a custom DDNS-service?