| ASUS RT-N56U Wireless-N Gigabit Router |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Network | |
| Written by Steven Iglesias-Hearst | |
| Sunday, 17 April 2011 | |
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ASUS Wi-Fi Router Detailed FeaturesSo now we have had the grand tour of the RT-N56U router itself, it is time now to look at the software side of things. Setup is very simple indeed as there are no drivers etc to install, simply connect your modem to the WAN port and connect your PC to a LAN port. Then you just open your chosen web browser and you will be greeted with the following screen.
The default mode is internet sharing mode, this speaks for itself in that it distributes your internet connection to all of the computers in your home. The second mode is access point, this mode will extend a current wired or wireless network giving more range or maybe to add wireless to a wired network. After this screen your internet connection type is detected and after that you are prompted to enter wireless security settings and then you are done. More advanced users may want to explore the menu's further.
The first screen you are greeted with after the initial setup is the network map screen, from here you can get status of your wireless settings, internet connection, connected clients and attached storage. Clicking on any of the icons in the network map gives you more in depth information, in this case I have wireless security selected.
Next up is the AiDisk screen. After you have attached a USB storage device you need to come here and configure its sharing options. When you are done you will be provided a link to access the USB disk over your LAN and another link to access the USB drive from the internet.
In addition to the previous USB options, you also have UPnP Media Server that allows UPnP enabled devices on your network to access the USB storage device. The UPnP is off by default and enabling it is just one click away.
Next up are the QoS settings, this screen is rather basic and allows you to give priority to certain types of internet traffic really quickly. More advanced users will find more in depth options are available in the Advanced>WAN>QoS settings menu.
Speaking of advanced options you have more options here than you may care to look at. The RT-N56U is designed for home users and SOHO users alike so there are options to cater for many scenarios (far to many to go into detail in this review).
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Comments
Are you telling us that you dont have a laptop or other device that has 300mbps 802.11n with 2.4Ghz and/or 5Ghz ???
being a former reviewer myself i am appauled that you people have access to some of the best equipment available today and you dont even use the proper testing hardware or methodology.
Its getting harder and harder to read you peoples reviews. They are kore of a joke than anything.
And i cant believe you have dont anything but pi$$ off Asus with this review.
Why dont you remove this review before you hurt your own tarnished reputation and Asus'
Your comments suggest the latter, so please take the time to read the entire article before you run your mouth.
Also both of you please learn to spell and use correct punctuation and grammar before you make your next response.
As you doubtless know, the maximum theoretical throughput of a wireless router is something only reached in an RFI-shielded testing room with a pair of routers sitting rather close to each other. As Steven's tests show, the throughput tested with the Belkin USB router didn't come close to saturating even the 150Mb/s connection (there's that pesky "real world" interfering again!), so I don't understand why you think a faster connection would have made any difference. But then I'm not an expert on RFI propagation. Maybe you can explain it to me.
The new ASUS RT-N56U promised much better throughput. I tested it and discovered, as the reviewer noted, that the throughput never reached 150 Mbps. Worse, as the load increased (I have multiple computers doing various tasks such as streaming HD media files, music, and printing) the speed dropped to less than 80 Mbps for simple Internet connectivity.
This is basically a small computer that runs itself in Linux, with a modern Ralink chipset and 128 MB DDR Memory. As long as you update the firmware, go through all the settings and set this up properly, it will be a stable and stellar performer for anyone. Personally, I use random 63 character wpa2 password and reject my neighbor's mac address since he is a hack. If you have a real network printer with an Ethernet cable connecting it, simply copy the printer's mac address and lock it down to something standared like 192.168.1.200 and you will not have any issues at all! Simple and stable and secure!
Personally, the ASUS router is nice to look at, clean it with a synthetic cloth, as you would use to wax a high end car and it will be a pleasure to look at every day. Simple to clean also!
Now the best part in my opinion is that ASUS writes the firmware and they are a computer manufacturer with good code writers. Incidentally, had so many problems with firmware for a netgear wndr-3700 that I am selling that unit, which performed slower all around and had poor 5GHz signal strength in contrast to the ASUS RT-N56U! While I praise Netgear's Pro Safe professional series of equipment and recommend it for my client's, their consumer line seems much less refined.
ASUS RT-N56U is a WINNER for myself.
Umm... no, you don't assume that this is the maximum throughput based on just one Wireless G and one Wireless N adapter. If you are going to publish test results you should at least use multiple adapters from different vendors and a faster N adapter (300Mb/s) to see the routers true potential. This is an unfair review for ASUS.
Watch this space.
A statement such as "without further network adapters to test with these results were the maximum throughput that we could achieve" would be more appropriate.
Thank you for replying promptly though.