New Asus RT-AC56U 802.11ac Gigabit DualBand Wireless Router

[samhain1]

So it this a downgrade from the 66U and users of the 66U should go for the 67 or 68 when they appear?

 

[RMerlin]

So it this a downgrade from the 66U and users of the 66U should go for the 67 or 68 when they appear?

Depends on what you are looking for. USB 3.0 and faster CPU mean faster disk sharing and Download Master performance. The faster CPU also means faster VPN, and faster WAN to LAN performance if you use features that cause HW acceleration to be disabled.

Dual-stream wifi means slower wireless IF you have a triple stream card (not many people do).

So no, it's not a downgrade over the RT-AC66U. Simply a parallel product with its own strengths and weaknesses. For me, it was a rather major upgrade for my own specific use.

 

[tibere86]

Depends on what you are looking for. USB 3.0 and faster CPU mean faster disk sharing and Download Master performance. The faster CPU also means faster VPN, and faster WAN to LAN performance if you use features that cause HW acceleration to be disabled.

Dual-stream wifi means slower wireless IF you have a triple stream card (not many people do).

So no, it's not a downgrade over the RT-AC66U. Simply a parallel product with its own strengths and weaknesses. For me, it was a rather major upgrade for my own specific use.

I read this review on Amazon, is this true?

"I was unpleasantly surprised to discover it has 128MB RAM, not 256MB like they claim on Asus website or Amazon page. It's easy to check, just turn on "telnet" under Administration -> System, then you can telnet to asus router and type "sysinfo" or "free" to check available memory.
admin@RT-AC56U:/proc/sys/kernel# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 126220 52464 73756 0 1384
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 126220 52464 73756

I'm going to return it only because I feel like Asus benefits from misleading their loyal customers (and yes I like asus products but I think it's unacceptable). 128MB is twice less than ac66u."

 

[thiggins]

The AC56U opened on my disk right now has an ESMT M15F2G16128A DDR3, which is a 2Gbit (256 MByte) DDR3 RAM chip.

So it has the memory as advertised.

 

[RMerlin]

I read this review on Amazon, is this true?

"I was unpleasantly surprised to discover it has 128MB RAM, not 256MB like they claim on Asus website or Amazon page. It's easy to check, just turn on "telnet" under Administration -> System, then you can telnet to asus router and type "sysinfo" or "free" to check available memory.
admin@RT-AC56U:/proc/sys/kernel# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 126220 52464 73756 0 1384
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 126220 52464 73756

I'm going to return it only because I feel like Asus benefits from misleading their loyal customers (and yes I like asus products but I think it's unacceptable). 128MB is twice less than ac66u."

The router does have 256 MB. Sounds like his router had a pre-release firmware on it (my initial sample from Asus with FW 3.0.0.4.367 had 128 MB available, one week later I got the FW upgrade that enabled the full 256 MB).

A simple FW upgrade would have fixed that person's router.

 

[tibere86]

The AC56U opened on my disk right now has an ESMT M15F2G16128A DDR3, which is a 2Gbit (256 MByte) DDR3 RAM chip.

So it has the memory as advertised.

The router does have 256 MB. Sounds like his router had a pre-release firmware on it (my initial sample from Asus with FW 3.0.0.4.367 had 128 MB available, one week later I got the FW upgrade that enabled the full 256 MB).

A simple FW upgrade would have fixed that person's router.

Thanks thiggins + RMerlin!

 

[savestheday]

Hi all,
Currently using (2) RT-N66U's in my setup. One (down the basement; crappy wifi coverage because of steel beams down there) as a pure router running Shibby Tomato and the other, running RMerlin's build, as a pure access point (upstairs).

For those of you that own it, would you say the range on the AC-56U is better than that of a N66U? I am within the 30 day return window for the second N66U and now that Amazon has the AC-56U is stock, I could return it and get the 56U.

I also use the SSHd a lot and have a VM dedicated for this purpose. I think the ARM proc in the 56U could probably serve my SSHd tunneling needs just as well.

Thx in advance....

 

[RMerlin]

Hi all,
Currently using (2) RT-N66U's in my setup. One (down the basement; crappy wifi coverage because of steel beams down there) as a pure router running Shibby Tomato and the other, running RMerlin's build, as a pure access point (upstairs).

For those of you that own it, would you say the range on the AC-56U is better than that of a N66U? I am within the 30 day return window for the second N66U and now that Amazon has the AC-56U is stock, I could return it and get the 56U.

I also use the SSHd a lot and have a VM dedicated for this purpose. I think the ARM proc in the 56U could probably serve my SSHd tunneling needs just as well.

Thx in advance....

The RT-AC56U range should be either similar or worse than the RT-N66U. It only has internal antennas. I did see a slight range decrease on my Nexus 7 when I switched from an RT-AC66U to an RT-AC56U.

If you need a range increase, you will probably need to look at using third party antennas. The RT-AC68U might possible increase the range, but I'm not sure as the router hasn't been fully launched yet.

 

[thiggins]

For those of you that own it, would you say the range on the AC-56U is better than that of a N66U? I am within the 30 day return window for the second N66U and now that Amazon has the AC-56U is stock, I could return it and get the 56U.

The profile comparisons say that the RT-N66U should have higher effective range since its throughput is up in the 40 - 50 Mbps range at the
endpoints of our testing.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...113-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1226-asus-rtac56u

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...113-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1226-asus-rtac56u

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...113-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1226-asus-rtac56u

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...113-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1226-asus-rtac56u

 

[savestheday]

Perfect. Thanks guys. I guess I'll hold onto the N66U till the RT-AC68U comes out. I don't have any AC clients (yet) so I'm in no rush for AC speeds. Hopefully the RT-AC68U with its external antennas will have greater reach than the N66U.

 

[savestheday]

Btw, the entire problem that's prompting this is that when I have the Tomato router wireless active, and I use the same SSID on the RMerlin router, the RMerlin router gets "knocked out" at certain points during the day. I have to physically pull the power and reboot. If I don't have any wifi on the Tomato router, I'm fine.

Running the RMerlin router in AP mode with the same SSID as the Tomato router. (BTW, using Tomato for some of its VLAN stuff)

 

[RMerlin]

Make sure they're using different static channels. Leaving either on them on Auto might be less stable.

Changing router won't help with this particular issue.

 

[RTN]

Perfect. Thanks guys. I guess I'll hold onto the N66U till the RT-AC68U comes out.
I don't have any AC clients (yet) so I'm in no rush for AC speeds.
Hopefully the RT-AC68U with its external antennas will have greater reach than the N66U.

http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTAC68U/#overview
http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-...er_Peripheral_review_setup-performance_Page-2

 

[RMerlin]

http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTAC68U/#overview
http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-...er_Peripheral_review_setup-performance_Page-2

Some of these test results look wrong. For instance the USB performance - I expect it to be similar to the RT-AC56U, where I can easily get twice the performance they got. In fact, their USB 3 benchmark was even slower than their USB 2...

 

[PrivateJoker]

Some of these test results look wrong. For instance the USB performance - I expect it to be similar to the RT-AC56U, where I can easily get twice the performance they got. In fact, their USB 3 benchmark was even slower than their USB 2...

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11366&page=10

I'm having deja-vu!

 

[RTN]

Some of these test results look wrong. For instance the USB performance - I expect it to be similar to the RT-AC56U, where I can easily get twice the performance they got. In fact, their USB 3 benchmark was even slower than their USB 2...

Maybe looks: http://forum.ixbt.com/topic.cgi?id=14:58696-5#151 ?

 

[RMerlin]

Maybe looks: http://forum.ixbt.com/topic.cgi?id=14:58696-5#151 ?

What am I looking at specifically?

 

[kosh]

At the latest firmware does not work l2tp connection provider Beeline(Corbina). Possibly fix it?

 

[Burning Daylight]

optware packages

I found out that there is an optware available for asus ac56u. Where can I get an information, how to enable and use it (preferably on Asuswrt-Merlin)? Where can I find the package list?

 

[RMerlin]

I found out that there is an optware available for asus ac56u. Where can I get an information, how to enable and use it (preferably on Asuswrt-Merlin)? Where can I find the package list?

Install it the same way you would on a MIPS router:

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Initialize-OPTWARE

Asuswrt uses the mbwe-bluering Optware repo on the ARM routers.