ASUS RT-N66U - my review

[dejanh]

ASUS should really fire the guy that implements the storage capabilities on their routers. This is the second router that doesn't work as advertised for storage.

Agreed. Looks like the saga continues.

I'm planning on getting one soon. Sounds like this router can do exactly what I need it to do with flying colors. Although I completely see your point about the DLNA server (even though at the moment I don't use) you should not have to be a beta tester for them after spending $200 on a router. It's also false advertising.

I understand bugs happen. But looks to me like this wasn't ready to ship and they jumped the gun.

Multiple sources say that they're working on a update to fix it.

I would agree that the router was not really ready to ship and that it is false advertising. The shipping FW for English market (largest market most likely) was completely unusable and effectively gave you a non-functioning router out of the box. While there are workarounds a regular user should never have to resort to that for a product that is brand new. After all, would you buy a brand new car if you knew upfront that the brakes are shot and the steering wheel is missing? "No really, you can drive it, just put this metal bar through the hole in the steering column and off you go" DLNA is advertised to work out of the box as well, and it does not, and not even just that but who really has FAT32 formatted drives lying around these days to make Asus FW eng. department assume that FAT32 should be the file system to implement? FAT32, really?! Even XP machines will be running NTFS drives Just to be able to format >32GB FAT32 drive I had to use Linux (yes, I know Windows based tools exist, but that's beside the point).

So, yeah, RT-N66U definitely not ready to ship as is IMHO. I could also say that maybe we're paying the price as early adopters, but the RT-N66U is not new technology, it's evolutionary (from RT-N56U) not revolutionary. "Early adopter" really does not apply here.

 

[sfx2000]

Hmmm... interesting thread... I'll take a cheap shot from the gallery, and hopefully anybody from ASUS is listening and takes the commentary on this thread to heart.

Street price on this device is around $175USD (google marketplace)

1) The factory firmware is buggy - DD-WRT seems to be the way to go just to get basic functionality
2) NAS support is incomplete - FAT32 support only
3) DNLA is sorely problematic - must reboot after adding files, limited media types, FAT32 limits file sizes

The only apparent thing it has going for it is the radio performance...

Sounds to me like a pass - for the money, there are better choices out there from Netgear, Dlink, or Linksys - even Apple's Airport Extreme is at the same price point...

 

[stevech]

One wonders why ASUS put this on the market before the firmware was implemented/tested?
Appears that they succumbed to competitive pressures (first to market), but based on early customers' comments, they should have omitted untested features and promised better-later.

Maybe the root issue here is how much one can expect a "router" with a faster CPU than in the $50 ones to do, to try to be a NAS with DLNA et al.

 

[sfx2000]

@stevech - exactly - I share your thoughts...

ASUS is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by adding complexity (NAS/DNLA/blah) - sounds like it has a very good radio, and if ASUS would have focused on doing a couple of things really, really well, they would have had a winner on their hands...

now that the product has launched, they can't pull features out of the product without pissing customers off...

In many ways this reminds me of the Supra v.32bis modem from years ago...truly bleeding edge on the 14.4Kbps dial-up consumer modem front...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SupraFAXModem_14400

Cutting edge technology from Rockwell - The spec sheet was awesome - the actual implementation on the other hand... Inter-operating with the BBS modems, typically either USR Courier Dual Standard or Telebit Trail/NetBlazer -- it was a mess, and many times you were stuck either at a lower data rate or a connection full of errors... I was a BBS sysop back then, and we had a heavy investment in a fractional T1 with USR modem server pool, the best we could say is buy a USR Sportster

Oh well... I'm sure there is a lesson to be learned somewhere in this mess...

 

[Greg_Elite]

Hmmm... interesting thread... I'll take a cheap shot from the gallery, and hopefully anybody from ASUS is listening and takes the commentary on this thread to heart.

Street price on this device is around $175USD (google marketplace)

1) The factory firmware is buggy - DD-WRT seems to be the way to go just to get basic functionality
2) NAS support is incomplete - FAT32 support only
3) DNLA is sorely problematic - must reboot after adding files, limited media types, FAT32 limits file sizes

The only apparent thing it has going for it is the radio performance...

Sounds to me like a pass - for the money, there are better choices out there from Netgear, Dlink, or Linksys - even Apple's Airport Extreme is at the same price point...

It's not a pass at all. All you have to do is update the firmware out of the box (Make sure it's predownloaded).

I agree though you shouldn't have to update your new router to make it "functional".

Another fortunate thing is this sounds like a software problem that can be solved with an update.

 

[sfx2000]

It's not a pass at all. All you have to do is update the firmware out of the box (Make sure it's predownloaded).

I agree though you shouldn't have to update your new router to make it "functional".

Another fortunate thing is this sounds like a software problem that can be solved with an update.

Meh... Shouldn't have to make the paying customers do unpaid QA on what ultimately is an unbaked device...



sfx

 

[G37x]

As much as I hate the way this router was released, is there any better router now? No. If they fix NAT loopback and DLNA issues, this thing beats all of them by far.

 

[njweb]

Regarding some of the comments, the other N900 competitors tested (E4200 V2, WNDR4500, Zyxel NBG5715 (initial firmware at least) etc. performed worse, on average and overall, in terms of wifi performance (2.4 GHz).

Some (WNDR4500 e.g.) have a lot of complaints about poor performance and / or poor stability).
Just to illustrate the top of the line Netgear WNDR4500 has received 44 1 star and 2 star reviews on amazon out of 174 total reviews and many of these are after it had been on the market a while and after Netgear had released four firmware versions.
People claiming it drops connections every 2 hours etc.

Not exactly my idea of a better alternative.

Most of these N900 competitors cost around the same price as the RT-N66U or more. In fact the Zyxel NBG5715 MSRP is $250 (can be had for a lot less on sale but still the same price as the Asus amazon and newegg price) and the E4200 V2 is $20 more than the RT-N66U and performs worse on 2.4 GHz wifi).

For most users the routing performance is the biggest reason they buy a router.
The RT-N66U's predecessor RT-N56U has the highest WAN to LAN throughput and highest total simultaneous throughput of all the routers SNB has tested.
The 66U has even more memory and processing power, so it will likely be even better and thus be able to effortlessly supporting multiple simultaneous connections.

The E4200 V2 that cNet gives their editor's choice award leaves something to be desired in terms of 2.4 GHz wifi performance (cNet's own tests show this clearly ironically).

The RT-N66U is also very stable (no reboots since I bought mine about 3 weeks ago).

The issues, while I fully agree the bugs should not be there to begin with, are being worked on.
All I can say is the competitors' offerings also have or had bugs / non-working features too (E4200 media server storage issue took over 3 months to fix) as well and, worse, I have yet to find one with better 2.4 Ghz wifi performance.

My Asus router is doing a mighty fine job and Asus has been making firmware updates a lot quicker than Linksys.
Linksys releases them once every 3 months (even for a major bug like media storage not working).

I had the E4200 v1 and was honestly happy with it (did not need the media server or I would have returned it like many others rather than waiting the 100 days till the fixed it . The issue lasted from June 2011 - September 2011) at the time, alhough in hindsight I did not know what I was missing in wifi performance until I bought and tested the 66U.

The Linksys media storage issue with the E4200 v1, which arose in a new firmware (that added IPv6 support) after the router had already been on the market 2 full months (it also had a flashing logo bug that took them 5 months to eventually fix - they did not even acknowledge it was an issue when I called it in despite numerous users being affected).

Anyway, I have no connection with, or allegiance to, Asus and would have happily kept my Linksys E4200 v1 or Zyxel NBG5715 had they not been so disappointing in terms of 2.4 GHz wifi signal strength at longer distances.

Given that the RT-N66U has only been out for 1 month and they are already on the third firmware (a lot more frequent than Linksys which the whole time I owned my E4200 v1 never released an update more than once every 3 months and I bought it one month after it came out, so it is not as if it was a fully mature product).

Anyway, that is my two cents. I honestly don't care about one brand over another. I just pick what works best for my needs (I admittedly do not use port forwarding).
Buy whatever works best for you...

I am looking forward to Tim's test of the RT-N66U.

 

[HawkInOz]

• 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.

-Bonez

It's 23, and wouldn't you know it - I need 24. I Just got mine yesterday from JR.com and spent the day today setting it up and tweaking it. I kept trying to add the 24th reservation and locking it up. I actually enabled telnet so I could remotely reboot the dang thing each time I tried some variation and killed the web interface again.

So, Bonez, did you already submit the bug report to Asus on this? Thanks!

 

[inroute]

It's 23, and wouldn't you know it - I need 24. I Just got mine yesterday from JR.com and spent the day today setting it up and tweaking it. I kept trying to add the 24th reservation and locking it up. I actually enabled telnet so I could remotely reboot the dang thing each time I tried some variation and killed the web interface again.

So, Bonez, did you already submit the bug report to Asus on this? Thanks!

This is an artificial limit that I noticed when I got the unit a few weeks ago as well, and you can get around it by setting the nvram variable manually through telnet. That's what I did since I needed 26 of them, and also because I can always make sure they get ordered nicely.

Just telnet in and run this command:
nvram get dhcp_staticlist

That will show you what your DHCP reservations are currently set to. Then to update it you do the following:
nvram set dhcp_staticlist="<00:11:22:33:44:55>192.168.1.100<00:11:22:33:44:56>192.168.1.101"

and then do this to save the settings:
nvram commit

Using the "get" command you should be able to retrieve all of the ones you've already set, which you can copy, edit, and then run the "set" command.

This also comes in handy for several reasons:

1. Entering all these in when setting up the router fresh can be a pain. This lets you enter them in very quickly.
2. When you make modifications you can change the order instead of just appending to the end of the list, which means you can keep them in increasing IP order.
3. You can get around the limit the firmware apparently has in place. They will all appear in the configuration section of the GUI, but you'll want to use the telnet to make changes otherwise the GUI will likely freeze on you just like it did when you were trying to add number 24.

Just like the "nvram get dhcp_staticlist" there is also a "nvram get vts_rulelist". The formatting is similar, and that handles your port forwarding rules. The static DHCP and port forwarding things are always the two biggest pains for me when setting up the router, so saving those off can speed up the configuration without having to restore from a backup.

 

[hrana]

Given that the RT-N66U has only been out for 1 month and they are already on the third firmware (a lot more frequent than Linksys which the whole time I owned my E4200 v1 never released an update more than once every 3 months and I bought it one month after it came out, so it is not as if it was a fully mature product).

Anyway, that is my two cents. I honestly don't care about one brand over another. I just pick what works best for my needs (I admittedly do not use port forwarding).
Buy whatever works best for you...

I am looking forward to Tim's test of the RT-N66U.

Agree... I appreciate people tend to complain on the forums when things go bad *but* Asus has shown they're willing to respond to the community. This is a good thing and I'd hate for the complainers to ruin this for those of us who are owners (I own 3 RT-N66Us as of now). Netgear thought they could do the same thing through myopenrouter but it never really caught on.

I'm an old school Linksys owner and jumping ship to Asus was tough but I'm happy so far. I bought the router for its routing and wireless performance. I also bought it knowing Tomato worked out of the box. There simply isn't much else out there that is better in the consumer space in my honest opinion. All the rest of the whizbag stuff isn't really needed but I'm glad it's there if I ever need it. Anyway, I think bug reports and suggestions are very helpful to making this a better product. Let's keep it up.

 

[Greg_Elite]

Yea. Send all bug reports to Networking_Support@asus.com.

BTW about the other posters comment about the Netgear WNDR4500. About a year ago I went through 2 WNDR3700's both version 1 and version 2. They are simply defective pieces of junk. It wouldn't give my Windows 7 box an ip address. I'd get a private 169 address. Netgear products are banned from my house.

Also +1 to that Linksys not releasing firmware updates as often as they should.

 

[kc6108]

Agree... I appreciate people tend to complain on the forums when things go bad *but* Asus has shown they're willing to respond to the community. This is a good thing and I'd hate for the complainers to ruin this for those of us who are owners (I own 3 RT-N66Us as of now). Netgear thought they could do the same thing through myopenrouter but it never really caught on.

I'm an old school Linksys owner and jumping ship to Asus was tough but I'm happy so far. I bought the router for its routing and wireless performance. I also bought it knowing Tomato worked out of the box. There simply isn't much else out there that is better in the consumer space in my honest opinion. All the rest of the whizbag stuff isn't really needed but I'm glad it's there if I ever need it. Anyway, I think bug reports and suggestions are very helpful to making this a better product. Let's keep it up.

I too am an old school Linksys owner. At this point we use a Cisco SA540 (small business security class router) as our main router and use three Linksys E4200 v1's as access points throughout our very large two story (which a completely finished basement) home.

We bought the SA540 off eBay brand new for $200! It is a beast and is Linux based. We aren't fans of Cisco's IOS so this router was ideal for us. I could go on and on about the features of the SA540 but it's off topic and the features can easily be found on Cisco's website.

At any rate, we bought the E4200's off cisco dot com for $95 each (refurbished, no tax, and free shipping ). We have all of the E4200's set to "bridge" mode which essentially turns them into access points... all NAT, firewall, etc functionality is turned off. We have them wired to LAN ports 1 - 3 on the SA540.

Our entire network is gigabit. We stream HD (1080p) content all the time, so throughput and reliability is very important to us.

To date we have had no issues whatsoever with wireless coverage. I now wish we would have waited for the RT-66U. We have dozens of devices (TVs, AVRs, PCs [Mac's and PC's], laptops [Mac's and PC's], iPhones, iPads, Xooms, Xbox's, PS3's, Wii's, Kindles, etc) connected at any one time. So far the E4200's are fitting our needs (even using stock firmware ), but a few RT-66U's would have probably ended out future proofing our setup a little longer. The cost of the E4200 v2 and RT-66U was a bit discouraging though. Only time will tell how well our setup will hold up.

What's your setup like? Having three RT-66U's tells me you must have a killer setup.

 

[Guz]

Agree... I appreciate people tend to complain on the forums when things go bad *but* Asus has shown they're willing to respond to the community.

I'm sorry, but I have to slightly disagree here. When I "worked" with Asus on the 56U NAS dos attributes issue, they eventually said "No more work will be done on this issue." even though it still wasn't fixed, and they admitted it wasn't fixed properly. I asked if I could return the router for a refund, but they said no. But they did offer me a T-shirt for my troubles! (Seriously).

From my point of view, that is poor customer support. And to be honest, I won't buy or recommend Asus anymore. What they promise/advertise vs. what they deliver are really two separate things.

 

[dejanh]

I'm sorry, but I have to slightly disagree here. When I "worked" with Asus on the 56U NAS dos attributes issue, they eventually said "No more work will be done on this issue." even though it still wasn't fixed, and they admitted it wasn't fixed properly. I asked if I could return the router for a refund, but they said no. But they did offer me a T-shirt for my troubles! (Seriously).

From my point of view, that is poor customer support. And to be honest, I won't buy or recommend Asus anymore. What they promise/advertise vs. what they deliver are really two separate things.

Yeah, I've had mixed experiences with Asus. I have seen them fix some obvious problems as well, but I have also seen them give up on more complex problems. I'd say it's a mixed bag, and if we do not complain and are not vocal enough in our demands, we will not get anything in terms of change.

 

[njweb]

Some test results in case anyone missed them:

http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-rt-n66u-dual-band-gigabit-router-review/14666-4.html


Too bad there are no comparisons to other routers, but that is what Tim's excellent reviews (on this site - smallnetbuilder.com) are for.

Conclusion:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-rt-n66u-dual-band-gigabit-router-review/14666-5.html

 

[darksamus]

Yeah, I've had mixed experiences with Asus. I have seen them fix some obvious problems as well, but I have also seen them give up on more complex problems. I'd say it's a mixed bag, and if we do not complain and are not vocal enough in our demands, we will not get anything in terms of change.

Just like any company out there, they ONLY care about making money.. Support comes last!

 

[G37x]

Just like any company out there, they ONLY care about making money.. Support comes last!

You said it all...any company, there are no exceptions there..You just need to pick what's best for your needs.

 

[PeeingGuardian]

I'm sorry, but I have to slightly disagree here. When I "worked" with Asus on the 56U NAS dos attributes issue, they eventually said "No more work will be done on this issue." even though it still wasn't fixed, and they admitted it wasn't fixed properly. I asked if I could return the router for a refund, but they said no. But they did offer me a T-shirt for my troubles! (Seriously).

From my point of view, that is poor customer support. And to be honest, I won't buy or recommend Asus anymore. What they promise/advertise vs. what they deliver are really two separate things.

What was the DOS issue?

Asus Consumer products are good but don't seem as good as their components. I would love to see them keep growing in the consumer business though. I've had my RT-N66U for 3 weeks, and aside from DLNA(I even used FAT32), I'm pretty satisfied with the product. No issues, zero downtime, no crashing (Not that my RT-N16 did any of that).

 

[dejanh]

So, I sent in the issues to networking_support@asus.com because that is supposed to be the email for reporting issues, correct...alright, well, I asked for a receipt so that I know when the email has been addressed. Make what you want from this

[B][censored for now][/B]@asus.com

12:20 PM (2 hours ago)

to undisclosed recipients
Your message

To: Networking_Support
Cc:
Subject: Re: Missing DLNA media server functionality on RT-N66U
Sent: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 11:48:22 -0800

was deleted without being read on Mon, 6 Feb 2012 12:20:42 -0800



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I'm not impressed by this reply At the very least pretending to read it is much better than deleting it without even opening it. It is a customer complain contact line after all.