New User: Few Questions

[Joe87t]

Hey guys, new user here. Just picked up an Asus RT-AC68R and had a few questions for you guys. I'm new to networking but am willing to learn as well, so hopefully these questions don't sound stupid.

first thing I did when I got my router was upgrade to the most recent version of merlin. I'm using a 2TB external hard drive via USB 3.0 as a "cloud drive"

I noticed I can view the drive via ftp when on my home wifi and on a PC for example and via asus app anywhere via my amartphone. However is it possible to FTP into the drive remotely, NOT on my own wifi? For example if I'm at a friends house and want to read / write to the drive remote? I tried ftp://WANIP but had no luck, the asuscomm website didn't work either if I'm not on my own home network.

secondly I'm using stock clock settings and noticed right out of the box my router sits around 78 - 80* celcius CPU temp at stock speeds... I assume without a external fan that over clocking is out of the question?

Would there be any benefit to leave the CPU clock speed at 800mhz and raise the RAM clock from 666 to 800 or do they need to go hand in hand? Will raising the ram but not the CPU also generate more heat or will it remain the same?

Lastly, is anyone doing mods to increase signal on these units? I saw on amazon some "super antennas" or whatever that you can use to replace the stock ones with for greater range?

Any help is appreciates. Thanks

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[jegesq]

I'll leave the discussion of overclocking the AC68U to others. As for the range issue, yes, you can raise the transmission power both with adding higher-gain external antennas than the stock ones, or by using different versions of firmware that allow you to increase the power of the transmission (i.e., Merlin's FW 374.46 or earlier, or the "374 fork" FW available in the Asus AC forum). There are also various threads here on the Asus forums which describe how to raise the transmission power beyond the limits that either Merlin or stock FW are capable of outputting (by modifying the bootloader and changing the router's country codes). The legality of raising your router's transmission power beyond FCC rules is something that has engendered a lot of debate, here and elsewhere and I'm not going to add to that debate here except to say that you probably shouldn't do anything that would otherwise be illegal.

Setting aside purely legal issues, you should keep in mind that as you increase the router's tx power, you're also increasing the amount of distortion and noise into the transmitted signal, and this can actually reduce your effective range/throughput. Also, you will appreciate that the tx signal is only one half of the equation, and unless your client devices are also capable of raising their own tx/rx power, you're unlikely to be able to communicate with them beyond the range that each device is able to effectively communicate with the router. There are several levels of diminishing returns when it comes to increasing range of the router alone, and generally, most people will tell you that in order to maximize throughput (and thus speed), you really should aim for the minimum power transmission (which will reduce range on the router itself but also improve the SNR; if you're really concerned about areas that can't be covered by your router's wireless signal, that's better addressed by adding Access Points to your environment (an AP is essentially another wireless transmitter that is connected to your router via a LAN cable, so there's no signal loss, and the AP is therefore capable of transmitting at the same physical connection speed as your router, thus avoiding the "one-half" speed that you'd experience if you were to use a wireless extender instead of an AP).

Lastly, when it comes to increasing your router's transmission signal power, this also raises the issue of whether you're being a good neighbor to others around you. The issue is that we all have to share essentially the same small areas of bandwidth that are available for use with our routers. Routers also have "coexistence" features built in, which enables them to both sense and react when others are using the same or overlapping channels, in order to allow everyone to coexist within the same shared frequencies. If you raise your transmit power, you essentially send that signal (with Omni directional antennas used on virtually every stock consumer SOHO router) everywhere, including into your neighbors homes, essentially stepping on everyone else's signals, and generally degrading not only your own experience, but everyone around you. The point is that because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.