ASUS RT-N66U - my review

[Spitfire69]

Converting to MB/s, we get 13.4 MB/s read and 7.9 write for SAMBA.

Cisco Linksys E4200V2 got 22 MB/s read, 20 MB/s write for an NTFS formatted drive.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...al-band-n900-router-reviewed?showall=&start=2

I assume they tested the same drive and it should be clean to...

 

[Ezrem]

So has anyone cracked their router and put a MicroSD in yet? I'm expecting mine on Thursday, but don't want to go to the trouble if it doesn't work.

 

[thiggins]

The USB drive won't make an appreciable difference. Drive format will and the other review said format was NTFS.

 

[njweb]

Converting to MB/s, we get 13.4 MB/s read and 7.9 write for SAMBA.

Cisco Linksys E4200V2 got 22 MB/s read, 20 MB/s write for an NTFS formatted drive.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...al-band-n900-router-reviewed?showall=&start=2

The USB speed is the biggest advantage the E4200 v2 has over other SOHO routers, so the results make sense.
If only it had wireless signal strength and throughput at long range to match the RT-N66U or Amped R1000 e.g.

I don't normally use the USB port on my router for file sharing.
However I just got an external 2 TB drive last month using a Christmas gift coupon as an incentive (I have yet to unpack it), so I might hook it up to my
RT-N66U to use as networked storage as opposed to hooking it up to one of my PC's directly (which also allows networked storage but requires the PC it is connected to to always be on).
I think the biggest benefit is that managing the write permissions to the USB drive's folders via the router's software is probably more efficient.

 

[12darline]

Actually DDNS -(DYNDNS) and port forwarding is sort of working on the RT-N66U (*90 firmware), but you can't view from inside your network. I am forwarding 4 IP Camera ports via DDNS and can see them if I view from a different network. Hope they fix it soon, as it would make things much easier. My Linksys E4200 v1 had no problems like this. Hope this helps...

Just got off the phone with Asus tech support. What we are looking for is called "loopback" or NAT redirection. This Asus tech support person tells me that this function is sometimes handled by routers via the firmware, but Asus has decided not accomplished it in their firmware and probably will not be in the future. Does anyone know if tomato can handle this?

 

[ldp]

If you can't access a computer in the LAN using then WAN IP or the DDNS for the WAN IP (LAN computer has port forwarding set on the router for the application you are trying to access) but it's working from outside your network (internet) than you must enable NAT loopback.

I don't know if the RT-N66U has this option with the default firmware but tomato has this, just search for it in 'Advanced/Firewall/NAT loopback' and set this to 'All'.

So if this is the only problem with port forwarding than port forwarding has no problem just that the firmware has NAT loopback disabled and has no option to enable it.

Maybe you can understand what NAT loopback does reading this:
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/NAT_Loopback_Routers

 

[12darline]

Thank you for the information. I think you've nailed it. Asus does not allow for NAT Loopback and will not in the future, so I will have to investigate which 3rd party firmware will work best with the RT-N66U.

Again, thank you very much for the information...

 

[G37x]

If you can't access a computer in the LAN using then WAN IP or the DDNS for the WAN IP (LAN computer has port forwarding set on the router for the application you are trying to access) but it's working from outside your network (internet) than you must enable NAT loopback.

I don't know if the RT-N66U has this option with the default firmware but tomato has this, just search for it in 'Advanced/Firewall/NAT loopback' and set this to 'All'.

So if this is the only problem with port forwarding than port forwarding has no problem just that the firmware has NAT loopback disabled and has no option to enable it.

Maybe you can understand what NAT loopback does reading this:
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/NAT_Loopback_Routers

Thank you. I trust what you said, but in that case my router goes back to amazon. I find this stupid really. Every single router I had since 2000 (had a lot of them) did NOT have this issue, including RT-N56U...Why did they change this??????????? btw I don't remember seeing this setting in any of my previous routers but could be wrong...

 

[though]

Thank you. I trust what you said, but in that case my router goes back to amazon. I find this stupid really. Every single router I had since 2000 (had a lot of them) did NOT have this issue, including RT-N56U...Why did they change this??????????? btw I don't remember seeing this setting in any of my previous routers but could be wrong...

load tomato on it. you won't look back...

 

[G37x]

VPN question

Guys I have a question please. I got an iphone4 and set up a VPN connection to my WAN IP (router) using my domain DDNS. The VPN server is set up on my router and all works fine, I did log into my router using 192.168.1.1, fabulous. Now, what I like to do if possible, is to access my AVR and Google TV applications also. When Ii try now it says I need the wifi on. It should be possible right?

Thank you!

 

[stevech]

Just got off the phone with Asus tech support. What we are looking for is called "loopback" or NAT redirection.

I call this "trombone" NAT. None of the router's I've owned will do it. Is a bit of a PITA though. Normally, not an issue with me as when on a PC on my home LAN, I just bookmark or refer to the LAN address, not the WAN address.

 

[Bonez]

Catching up on this thread

Great thread - where's my badge for reading every word?

I'll try to focus on things that haven't been noted, answered, etc. but will apologize in-advance since I tend to be a bit verbose.

Right off the bat, quite honestly, I'm surprised at all of the Tomato-loading going on right now. Asus' .90 firmware is actually very good and full-featured - especially when compared to a lot of the other crap out there. Not having used tomato, what are the main advantages you're seeing? I'll definitely try it at some point but I'm actually pretty happy with the full-featured GUI Asus has provided for a change...and telnet access, busybox, etc., under the covers ain't bad either Performance appears to be excellent... but I confess I haven't run a full suite of tests yet (I'm mostly concerned about my GigE network performance through the router vs. wireless performance just based on what I've read thus far)

A few comments on some of the regular complaints:

• Availability: While maybe the Chinese new year slowed things a little, it's most likely more of a supply chain issue. To the gentleman commenting on the product manager - yeah, he's lucky if he's still with the company at this point...but I suspect it was just a localization issue given that it wasn't developed in the US (a fairly common problem, unfortunately). I'm sure the initial target was CES2012 for launch/retail availability and they rushed instead of taking their time. Curiously, I wonder whether hardware was to blame (since the earlier PCB version had a fan vs. the heat sink used later on - that could have helped slip things).
  
  Anyways... based on this post, they released the .90 firmware on about ~Jan11-13. Catching an issue like this and posting the firmware commercially within a few weeks is actually really quick software development. From one post, it looks like they were attempting to get inventory back from retailers (telling a user to return theirs) and based on the lack of availability at retail, I'm betting they contained the .72 firmware to the first shipment or two. Back in Taiwan (guessing that's where they're manufacturing), they started using that .90 firmware just as soon as they could. So, looking at North America availability, counting from ~Jan13...figure on a few days for manufacturing/packaging, ~11 days at sea, ~7 days for customs, maybe ~7 days to get to the retailers... that's almost four weeks. If they pull of retail availability of .90 by Feb13th in NA, I'd be *really impressed*. Hopefully, it doesn't have a different hardware rev otherwise I'll be returning mine for a swap before 30 days is up.
  
• Port Forwarding: Port forwarding in the truest sense (external WAN->RT-N66U->LAN machine) works great...it's just NAT Loopback that's not working. (just saw the posts above on this) But is it really that hard to use an internal (RFC1918) IPORT to connect to machines on your network? It's just the difference between varying the fourth octet of the IP address vs. varying the port (assuming all your cameras run on the same port). If you want to make it easier, try reserving DHCP addresses for your camera IP mac addresses so that they're all contiguous or making a simple local webpage that has shortcuts/links to them all. I just don't understand what the big deal is. (maybe I'm missing something?)
  
• DynDNS: Working like a charm and verified via DynDNS that things were updating so I haven't seen any issues. Immediately moved my IP properly (I purposely used a different MAC address when setting things up so my cable modem would assign a new IP so I could test)
  
• Admin UI available via WAN when disabled: I've run several tests and have not seen this issue w/.90. It's possible that it might be the 'Accept Issue' I note below.
  
• Ability to Disable Hardware NAT Someone asked about this - there is a setting under LAN->Switch Control called 'Disable HW Accelerator' - it defaults to 'No' which makes me wonder whether this is it (no tooltip or mention in the manual for it, though)
  
• Known Issues: Asus, if you're reading this, a known issues list would be great so that we know what you're working on.

Issues I've seen:

• Accept Issue: This is a UE design flaw. In several areas of the GUI, they have a nice plus sign to click and add something but it's not truly added until you hit 'accept'. In a few areas, I've seen multiple adds actually cause nothing to be committed..or worse, cause the web interface to become non-responsive (httpd crashes). Example: You add a Parental Control permit time, have to hit 'OK', THEN have to also hit 'Accept' for it to actually commit. If you navigate away from the page before hitting accept, it won't add the change. I suspect this 'issue' is causing a good number of problems where people report things as 'not being saved'.
  
• Enabled vs. Enable: Again, evidence of the challenge with localization to English...but in this case, given how the terms are normally used, it really confuses whomever's configuring the router. I'll file a bug on this one w/Asus.
  
• Port Forwarding: Yes, I can't hit myexternalip.com:3389 but going straight to 192.168.1.100 works fine (IPs used are examples). Not truly an issue in my book unless you're wanting to do some fancy port swapping to disguise your RDP session (or whatever) on a different external vs. internal port, or similar.
  
• DHCP Address Reservation Limit: I have to do a bit more testing, but I think it's 23 or 24 hosts. I ran into this when I was doing an initial config and at some point, if you try to add another, it crashes httpd (the web interface) and requires a reboot. I'll test and submit a bug report to Asus.
  
• Parental Control Modification Limit: I was adding a bunch of parental controls (mainly, to lock out my kids from Netflix and Minecraft before 7am on a host of devices while still allowing auto-updates/backups and such to occur in the 2am-4am hour) and on the fourth device, and only when adding a second permit segment to the 7th day, it locks up and crashes httpd hanging on 'proceeding'.
  
• Web Admin UI Lockups: As mentioned for both the DHCP and Parental Control issues, the Admin UI will on some occasions fully lockup making any requests on port 80 from the LAN side non-responsive. A reboot fixes it, nothing else does. The router still does its thing so I can telnet in (I have it enabled), issue a 'reboot' command, it reboots the router and 30 seconds later, everything's back to normal. This is especially handy when I'm remote (I RDP/VNC/PPTP and do the same). Of note is that these issues don't appear to be impacted by the number of changes being made at one time (since, for instance, I made 20 DHCP reservations in my testing in one 'accept') but by crossing a threshold/boundary that's not supported by the UI and causes the web server to crash. Anyone else seeing these? I have yet to see any mention of it. I can restart httpd via telnet but then it can't find the webpages... I have yet to really fiddle with it.
  
• Setup reverted to default: In the initial config, after putting it in router mode vs. peer, at one point, it lost my network configs and it reverted to some default Asus network ID. i don't believe it was the 'accept issue' but it could have been. After config'ing it again, it stuck.. just something to be aware of.

And, my backlog of items to run through:

• I've had one report of instability on my wireless 'guest' network (dropped connections) - not sure what was up.
• Follow-up on the httpd crashes
• Performance testing (especially wired throughput and noticed Jumbo frame support as well
• Tomato, I suppose

-Bonez

 

[darksamus]

Great thread - where's my badge for reading every word?

I'll try to focus on things that haven't been noted, answered, etc. but will apologize in-advance since I tend to be a bit verbose.
<snip>

That is why I currently do not use the stock firmware. Geraner said that it is 10mbps slower when using Tomato. I have it running for over a week with no slow down. I even setup a iperf test server and plug it into the wan port and had 4 pc connected to the lan ports to test the lan and wan ports. I average about 480MB/3840mb to my server which has 12 hard drives on a RAID5, which has really good read/write speeds.

Until Asus fixes all those issue, I am happy using Tomato.

 

[G37x]

Great thread - where's my badge for reading every word?

I'll try to focus on things that haven't been noted, answered, etc. but will apologize in-advance since I tend to be a bit verbose.

<snip>

Thanks for posting this. I did use parental control also. I wanted to block my Google TV from accessing Internet after 11pm, so I dragged and dropped that segment to allow access between 7am and 11pm, clicked apply and all that but still at 12am I could watch netflix. I'm positive the MAC its the TV's...

 

[Guz]

File attribute issues?

Has the file attributes issues, seen on the RT-N56U, been corrected on this new router?

 

[dejanh]

DLNA media server not working

Hi everyone,

First post on this forum. To keep things on topic, I bought the new RT-N66U a few days ago. Aside a bit of inconvenience dealing with the FW 72 issues, I go the router up and running pretty quick using FW 90. The wired and wireless speeds are great, so no complaints there. With that said, one of the major reasons why I bought this router is for its DLNA media server capability. However, this has not really been working out and I'm hoping to get some help and get a bit of attention around this issue.

Basically, setting up the router and enabling DLNA allows the RT-N66U to be detected as a media server. This causes all of my DLNA enabled devices to display the default media library structure, like Videos, Pictures, and Music (some like my Samsung TV also display Movies, and in case of WMC I see Recorded TV as well). However, the router shows these regardless of any external storage being connected. Further to this, connecting external storage means nothing since none of these libraries can actually be managed in any way nor can any media be loaded into them. Creating folders on the router only works in the root of the attached drive, but organizing media in those folders does not appear to work with only certain file formats being playable. In all, this whole feature is completely broken right now. Asus badly needs to put out an update that would allow organizing files on attached storage properly in the appropriate media libraries and then having those served to external DLNA enabled devices to stream media. Otherwise, this is nothing but a terribly weak file server and does not come even close to a media server.

Just as one example, I tried putting an AVI file in to a Movies directory which I created in the root, and not only is this directory not seen and does not relate back to the default libraries being published from the router, but the AVI file I loaded into it does not even show up as an AVI, rather it shows up as a folder Even as a file server this is very, very badly implemented.

Lots of improvement still needed it seems.

> TL; DR;

DLNA does not work. There is no way to link published libraries to media content on the attached storage, nor manipulate the contents of the drive in an effective way from the router. DLNA devices cannot access media content through DLNA protocols. Some access is possible but only as a file server, not as a DLNA media server. All file management is currently restricted to the root of the drive only with no folder structure (I am yet to verify this working correctly in fact). Even as a file server the file system and sharing is extremely poorly implemented. Firmware updates to resolve these issues are desperately needed.

 

[G37x]

Hi everyone,

First post on this forum. To keep things on topic, I bought the new RT-N66U a few days ago. Aside a bit of inconvenience dealing with the FW 72 issues, I go the router up and running pretty quick using FW 90. The wired and wireless speeds are great, so no complaints there. With that said, one of the major reasons why I bought this router is for its DLNA media server capability. However, this has not really been working out and I'm hoping to get some help and get a bit of attention around this issue.

Basically, setting up the router and enabling DLNA allows the RT-N66U to be detected as a media server. This causes all of my DLNA enabled devices to display the default media library structure, like Videos, Pictures, and Music (some like my Samsung TV also display Movies, and in case of WMC I see Recorded TV as well). However, the router shows these regardless of any external storage being connected. Further to this, connecting external storage means nothing since none of these libraries can actually be managed in any way nor can any media be loaded into them. Creating folders on the router only works in the root of the attached drive, but organizing media in those folders does not appear to work with only certain file formats being playable. In all, this whole feature is completely broken right now. Asus badly needs to put out an update that would allow organizing files on attached storage properly in the appropriate media libraries and then having those served to external DLNA enabled devices to stream media. Otherwise, this is nothing but a terribly weak file server and does not come even close to a media server.

Just as one example, I tried putting an AVI file in to a Movies directory which I created in the root, and not only is this directory not seen and does not relate back to the default libraries being published from the router, but the AVI file I loaded into it does not even show up as an AVI, rather it shows up as a folder Even as a file server this is very, very badly implemented.

Lots of improvement still needed it seems.

> TL; DR;

DLNA does not work. There is no way to link published libraries to media content on the attached storage, nor manipulate the contents of the drive in an effective way from the router. DLNA devices cannot access media content through DLNA protocols. Some access is possible but only as a file server, not as a DLNA media server. All file management is currently restricted to the root of the drive only with no folder structure (I am yet to verify this working correctly in fact). Even as a file server the file system and sharing is extremely poorly implemented. Firmware updates to resolve these issues are desperately needed.

On the same topic with you here, I connected my 1T hdd ntfs to RT-N66U and ran through the Adisk wizard. Following this I can connect to ftp:// etc from any browser...However when I browse devices on my Google Tv and Sammy LED Tv, I see the RT-N66U but when I click on it it shows no folders at all! WTH??

 

[dejanh]

On the same topic with you here, I connected my 1T hdd ntfs to RT-N66U and ran through the Adisk wizard. Following this I can connect to ftp:// etc from any browser...However when I browse devices on my Google Tv and Sammy LED Tv, I see the RT-N66U but when I click on it it shows no folders at all! WTH??

Yeah, DLNA does not work on this router at all (well, it "detects" but it is unmanageable, literally, as in it cannot be maintained at all in any way), and SMB file serve is also messed up pretty badly. IMHO this is pretty disappointing for a $200 router. I bought this for very specific reasons but right now 50% of those features I needed from it are not working.

I am currently using a 2TB Green NTFS formatted. Going to try ext3 or ext4 and see if that nets any better results, but I personally doubt it. It really makes me scratch my head sometimes how these things get past engineering QA...the only reason that I can see is that there is really no engineering QA at all being done.

 

[G37x]

Yeah, DLNA does not work on this router at all (well, it "detects" but it is unmanageable, literally, as in it cannot be maintained at all in any way), and SMB file serve is also messed up pretty badly. IMHO this is pretty disappointing for a $200 router. I bought this for very specific reasons but right now 50% of those features I needed from it are not working.

I am currently using a 2TB Green NTFS formatted. Going to try ext3 or ext4 and see if that nets any better results, but I personally doubt it. It really makes me scratch my head sometimes how these things get past engineering QA...the only reason that I can see is that there is really no engineering QA at all being done.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. Hmm, there was a guy here who said it was very easy for him to accomplish this DLNA thing only by reading the manual?? Got very upset because I said in here DLNA is useless. Leaving that aside what is in that manual really? Nothing...
As far as passing QA yes that is the case..There is no real QA these days, the bugs are being passed out to the customers in the hope to be fixed by future fw.

 

[dejanh]

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. Hmm, there was a guy here who said it was very easy for him to accomplish this DLNA thing only by reading the manual?? Got very upset because I said in here DLNA is useless. Leaving that aside what is in that manual really? Nothing...
As far as passing QA yes that is the case..There is no real QA these days, the bugs are being passed out to the customers in the hope to be fixed by future fw.

Actually, whoever posted that it was easy for them to get DLNA media server working has no idea what they are talking about or what constitutes DLNA media server or for that matter even a file server, but let me explain.

DLNA media servers are meant to be able to inter-operate with DLNA media player clients, most of which are not capable of full access to the file system, SMB abstracted or not. In simple terms, devices like your TV have a very light-weight client (player) built in that is DLNA certified and as such it is programmed to access only DLNA media server content organized in a very specific way. Typically, what a DLNA client will look for is media "libraries" such as Music, Videos, Photos, etc. being served to it in a specific way. Now, the RT-N66U does report these "libraries" to DLNA clients, but there is no way to manage the said libraries at all, and they in no way link back to the attached storage. In fact they link back to nothing at all!

Now, a file server is any server capable of "serving" files across a network (yes, the definition in essence is that dumb). All file servers are in principle media servers as well, since they can offer access to media content to those clients capable of accessing the same file server shares. However, most file servers are not DLNA media servers, since they offer no DLNA certified interoperability with DLNA clients. Simply put, while they are capable of serving files they do so using the standard SMB protocols (for instance). This however is not recognized by light-weight DLNA clients and therefore they are unable to actually access any content. The fact that you can access your media files over a network using a network enabled device != DLNA media server...not even by a long shot This also does not imply in any way that the DLNA media server capability is working on the RT-N66U.

So, again, we are back to square one. DLNA media server on the RT-N66U does not seem to work at all, and the SMB file serve is very poorly implemented.

Edit: I will be doing some tests tonight with the files dumped into the root of the drive to see again if that will make any difference, particularly with different file systems.