ASUS RT-N66U - my review

[ladysman]

How did you upgrade ? I tried the tomato-K26USB-1.28.RT-N5x-MIPSR2-083V-Mega-VPN.trx image, but the stock firmware reports that its an invalid image file.

Thanks!

change the .trx to .bin.

I've always had to do this with tomato builds.

 

[phila]

I think you have to put it in recovery mode and use their utliz. software to upload it.

I threw the CD that came with it away, and cannot find it on ASUS site(at least not for rt-n66u).
Can anybody upload it to mediafire or somewhere else?

Thanks!

 

[darksamus]

Has anyone confirm if the 2.4GHz and 5GHz work with any of the tomato or dd-wrt firmware?

 

[KeithKman]

I placed my order with Amazon on the 1st of January and I still have not received an email that it has shipped.

Question: I am running an old Ambit cable modem that I believe is DOCSIS 2.0. Should I upgrade to a Cisco DOCSIS 3.0 before my RT-N66U comes? What would I gain? Upgrading would be free through my ISP.

 

[sirozha]

change the .trx to .bin.

I've always had to do this with tomato builds.

Does this Tomato build have 802.3ad and 802.1Q functionality (LACP and VLAN tagging) in GUI?

Thanks!

 

[Greg_Elite]

It's true that Mac OS has origins in FreeBSD, but the kernel is different - it's a Mach kernel. Linux is actually the kernel - not the entire OS. The entire OS is actually called GNU/Linux. GNU was created as a project to re-write Unix utilities from scratch to get away from law suits that AT&T hit BSD with. When GNU developers created the entire suite of Unix-like utilities, they needed a kernel. They shopped around and actually considered Mach as a kernel, but decided to go with Linux instead. Mac OS X, on the other hand, has integrated many GNU utilities just like various GNU/Linux distros. That's the reason I said that Mac OS X and Linux are cousins. Among commercial Unix flavors, Mac OS X is the closest one to GNU/Linux because GNU is a suite of re-written BSD utilities, Mac OS X is based on BSD, and on top of this, Mac OS X has integrated many GNU utilities developed after GNU partnered with Linux.

If AT&T had not sued BSDi in the late 1980s early 1990s, BSD would have been what GNU/Linux is today. When AT&T dropped its law suit against BSDi in 1992, the developers of the GNU project already integrated the Linux kernel, so it was late for BSD to compete with GNU/Linux, and BSD development ceased. It was Steve Jobs's new company that picked up where BSD left off, replaced the kernel with Mach, added many GNU utilities, and created NeXT, from which Mac OS X developed.

Your not adding to anything I didn't already imply. I was just correcting you.

 

[phila]

I threw the CD that came with it away, and cannot find it on ASUS site(at least not for rt-n66u).
Can anybody upload it to mediafire or somewhere else?

Thanks!

After digging in trash, I got the CD . Here is the link to the utility in case somebody needs it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?f459jjk5155alds

 

[darksamus]

After digging in trash, I got the CD . Here is the link to the utility in case somebody needs it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?f459jjk5155alds

Let us know if shibby's tomato firmware allows both 2.4ghz and 5ghz. I am still waiting for mine to arrive today to test it.

 

[darksamus]

Let us know if shibby's tomato firmware allows both 2.4ghz and 5ghz. I am still waiting for mine to arrive today to test it.

Nevermind... Confirm in another forum that 2.4ghz and 5ghz works with shibby's tomato firmware.

 

[Geraner]

I am extremely pleased with the RT-N66U so far (working from home part of today and got a chance to hook it up and test it during lunch).

I will post more details and test results tonight hopefully (signal strength and throughput).
To summarize in the meantime:
The RT-N66U is much better than my E4200 at long range wifi and, depending on the test location (bedroom, living room or family room) was either slightly better, the same or ever so slightly worse than my Amped R10000 which I had been very happy with (till now).
.
.
So long as it stays stable (as Geraner's experiences indicate), I will definitely be keeping the RT-N66U!!!

I'm glad you got yours and you are happy with it too.
Looking forward to see your test results later.

All tests I made where done with Wifi-Settings locked to 40 MHz both for the 2,4 and 5 GHz.
Also keep in mind that I'm not living in a house. I'm only living in a flat with 68 square meters. But anyway I see that the Wifi signal is stronger than with my old D-Link DIR-825.

Reading your results when published.

 

[Greg_Elite]

Hey Gerner, where you able to update to 3.0.0.3.90 right out of the box? Like if I purchase this I won't have to do some crazy work arounds just to flash it to the latest firmware (getting out of the setup wizard).

 

[dinko]

I got a router with the old firmware and upgrade to the newest version without too much hassle. I actually didn't try it the normal way but just went with what Siroza had recommended (ie: click on home, change language and then upgrade the firmware). It wasn't too hard and took all of 5 minutes (including the three it takes for the firmware to upgrade). I then reset everything to factory settings and I was good to go.

My impressions so far are very positive. Definitely a huge step up from my previous router .

 

[Aanuka]

How did you upgrade ? I tried the tomato-K26USB-1.28.RT-N5x-MIPSR2-083V-Mega-VPN.trx image, but the stock firmware reports that its an invalid image file.

Thanks!

As stated earlier by another person, you need to put it into recovery mode to be able to flash Shibbys build.

Havn't been able to test the 5GHz band on Shibbys build yet, nor seen it up since I'm lacking a WIC with 5GHz. Althought it's visible in the GUI and you can change settings and everything. Somebody else might can confirm that it works.

On another note, I decided to return my unit. At the most I peaked on a maxium uploadspeed of 59Mbit/s, compared to 97Mbit/s without the RT-N66U. At first I thought this might be due to firmware and didn't care too much about it, but then it started to act wierd on me.

First the wireless started to give me bad speeds and drop me out a few times, which made it impossible to stream a movie to my D-Link Boxee Box using the wireless. I also got this behaviour on 3 other devices, all within just a meters from the router.

I also host a couple of server inside my LAN that people can connect to external. After the router has been up 1-2 days the internet connection just dies for all the devices connected to the RT-N66U.
As an example I have a TeamSpeak 3 running, it starts with that what I say (I sit behind the RT-N66U along with the server) dosen't get transmitted to the rest of the people, but the server still get's what they say and transmitt it to me (But not the other external speakers). A few seconds later all connections get dropped and the net complety dies, almost as if the NAT-table gets filled and can't handle anything more.
The only way to fix this is to power-cycle the router.

Now, seeing that alot of other people have reports of rock-stable connection I do think that my unit might be faulty and therefor returned it. Althought it seems that the router have problems with high uploadspeed as confirmed by other users, which give me some doubts if I shall pick the RT-N66U as a new replacement unit, or look for something else, hopefully the firmware is just utterly bad and the speed will go up.

 

[njweb]

Yes. Interesting. Amazon has it listed from a 3rd party for $183.83 + $6.44 shipping--but if you look just below under more buying choices $179.99 with Prime ( which is what I bought).

BTW, I am assuming the N66U supports IPv6 ( reportedly due to start June of this year) but I don't see that listed on the ASUS product page. Can you confirm with your product's documentation?

Yes, I did see that amazon had it for the old price $179.xx with free super saver shipping) but when I went in it still said '2 - 4 weeks', so you may have gotten one of the ones they got in today before they went out of stock!

Yes, the RT-N66U does support IPv6. There are two native IPv6 options in the router config GUI. One is 'native IPv6' and one is 'native IPv6 with DHCP'.
Re. June 2012. Some / many ISP's may be upgrading their networks to support IPv6 by then but the consensus seems to be that it will be several more years before people need to actually worry about IPv6 routers being needed.
I believe there are workarounds (for now), such as tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 (although I think there may be pre-requisites in order for this to work, such as when firewalls are considered), but I would need to read up on it a bit more since I do not claim to know a lot about the inner technical workings of the IPv6 protocol...

 

[darksamus]

Not bad

I just got it. First thing I did was put it into recovery mode and loaded shibby's tomato firmware. So far its just as good as my asus rt-n16 (with better range). I will test the 5ghz using my xbox and steam hdtv from my hdhome run to my xbox.

I currently have my 2.4ghz lock into g-only speed. My 5ghz is felt at default since I don't know that is a good setting for it since it is my first time using 5ghz.

 

[njweb]

Test Results

Okay, as promised, here are some test results of my Amped R10000 wifi versus my new Asus RT-N66U:

First off, if anyone understands what (other than packet loss) could have caused the Amped to have issues displaying a random number of Netflix covers in the main page I would love to hear theories.
Certain covers would be missing, then appear and then disappear again as I scroll up and down the rows of movie titles in the UI). Some would never load if I did not scroll through the list.
This was happening with my SmartTV but not my Blu-Ray player in the same room, despite both having the same Netflix menu look and feel.


TEST RESULTS (to save time I may paste some of this directly from my two Word docs so forgive the formatting etc):
All tests are 2.4 GHz unless otherwise noted.

1. Bedroom (adjacent to router room):
Amped R10000
20 MHz setting. Wifi Adapter rnx-n2x. antennae 90 degrees.
Signal Strength = -33 dBm (100%)

Throughput in Mbps (LAN Speed Test 2.0.9):
72.353 / 65.792 (writing / reading)

blu-ray bdt210 20mhz 5 bars sig strength

Asus RT-N66U
Laptop 20/40 MHz setting rnx-n2x antennae 90 degrees sig strength = -29 dBM (100%)
Speed Test = 55 / 46.696 Mbps
Blu-ray (bdt210 model) 20MHz = 5 bars sig strength
SmartTV = 89% sig. strength wifi


2. Living Room
Amped R10000:
Laptop sig strength = -43 dBM (100%)
Speed Test: 40.549 / 46.098

blu-ray bdt210 20MHz = 5 bars sig strength


Asus RT-N66U (20/40 MHz :
laptop - rnx-n2x adapter. sig strength = -45 dBm
Speed Test = 39.723 / 30.828
(I suspect 20 MHz would be a bit better based on testing both with 20 MHz and 20 MHz / 40MHz in the last room - see below).

bdt210 bu-ray 20 MHz 5 bars

3. Family Room (opposite end of house and one floor down from router. My home office room is in the corner and I do not want to move the router, PC and cable modem to the guest room, so I am stuck with it in the corner - I can only imagine how good the scores would be if it were closer to the middle of the house.)

Amped R10000:
laptop w/ rnx-n2x adapter signal = -49 dBm (100%)
LAN Speed Test = 29.721 / 44.827

bluray 20mhz = 4 bars sig. strength (out of 5)


Asus RT-N66U (router set to 20MHz only):
Laptop sig. strength = -52dBm (96%). When set to 20MHz/40 MHz, as might be expected, it was a bit worse than the -52 dBm at 20 MHz

speed test:
32.2 / 43.2 Mbps

bdt210 Blu-Ray wifi built-in: 2.4GHz = 5 bars (better than with Amped R10000, possibly due to Asus Beam Forming which may make some devices connect at slightly slower throughput than the Amped but which helps devices tucked away in corners).
5GHz = 3 bars (impressive given the distance and better than when using the Linksys E4200 5GHz)


I have a Linksys AE1000 dual band USB adapter (got it as a hot deal), that I did not like (which is why I use the Rosewill RNX-N2X most of the time - I also used my laptop's built-in 802.11n which works well for the room I use it in) with which I could test 5 GHz.
If I do so, I will post my results here.

 

[thiggins]

What is the reference for "writing" and "reading". The wireless client or wired client?

 

[njweb]

What is the reference for "writing" and "reading". The wireless client or wired client?

My wired client's shared drive was used for the reading and writing tests, running LAN Speed Test on a wifi-equipped laptop.

 

[darksamus]

Anyone if it is a good idea to have the 2.4ghz set to mix mode or lock at a certain speed?

Below is a snap shot of the router running shibby's firmware.

 

[delair2]

@njweb: what is the max bandwidth you purchased from your local ISP?