ASUS Reveals Most Powerful Enthusiast Router

ASUS is a well-known motherboard manufacturer that has recently been registering success after success with its notebook and tablet mobile series. Today, the company is officially introducing the new AC wireless router called RT-AC66U.

Ever since the launch of the 500GP series, ASUS has been pretty successful among the home wireless enthusiasts. The 500GP was the first model to have two integrated USB 2.0 ports that were able to share a printer, an external HDD and a webcam to the rest of the network. One other feature that ASUS has always underlined regarding its top-of-the-line wireless routers was the Download Master application that allows the user to directly download files and torrents onto the external HDD connected to the router. ASUS even had wireless routers that featured integrated HDDs with this function and others. The routers were often modded with 3rd party firmware and, because the platform was powerful and stable, enthusiasts even added more RAM or extra USB ports.

Although ASUS is not as an established player in the wireless networking market as NETGEAR or Linksys, the company is working hard and every year it’s releasing very powerful products. The new ASUS RT-AC66U wireless router is a 5th generation WiFi device with dual-band capabilities. The ASUS RT-AC66U wireless router can sustain two networks: one in 2.4 GHz with a maximum throughput of 450 Mbs and one in 5GHz that offers a maximum of 1.3 Mb/s of data transfer. The device can handle up to eight SSIDs and the ASUS AiRadar signal amplification and shaping technology will try and amplify the signal differently towards each wireless client.

Like most of its top-of-the-line predecessors, the ASUS RT-AC66U wireless router comes with two USB 2.0 ports that will handle 3G modem sharing, FTP and printer server functions. QoS and the Download Master function are also present along with VPN and IPv6. The price has not been made known yet, but we expect it to be around $150 and we honestly hope it won’t cost more.

Note:

• I’m the happy owner of an old ASUS 500GP router that has been handling an old HP 845C printer excellently. 
• The problem I usually had with my unit was the fact that the Download Master never worked.
• I’ve eventually moved away and left my 500GP behind, but the device is still handling a 3 computer network to this day and everything works smooth with the printer. 
• Nobody else tried to get the Download Master to work as the theory was that “If he couldn’t, who could?!”
• Now I’m the less happy owner of an RT-N16 wireless router.
• While I see that this one is much more powerful and that the new firmware is really great, I usually get lots of interruptions and I have to reboot the router although the traffic is very light on it and there are only 2 clients.
• Sometimes the device won’t print on the connected printer, in this case it’s a HP 1220C and without any logic, sometimes it will.
• The most annoying problem is that the QoS function is not working at all with the latest firmware installed. I’d enforce and register a bunch of rules and when I visit the status page or any other page, QoS moves back to automatic.
• Overall, if the firmware issues are ironed out, the ASUS devices are truly powerful and capable wireless routers.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview