ASUS RT-N16 - buy, review, impressions

A multi-functional wireless gigabit router with support for the 802.11n standard, today I’ll walk a bit along this flagship line of ASUS wireless routers. I will not beat around the bush, but the product was bought by me partly out of curiosity of geeks, in part to replace my ASUS WL-500W, which I did not have too much, only some 9 months, while working perfectly for six months uptime confirmation of this. We must pay tribute to the engineers ASUSTeK, something that, and the network equipment they do well, because special attention was paid to the new products of the same company. What attracted me to this new product?



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• Powerful processor, high speed packet processing;
• Support up to 300 thousand simultaneous sessions to support P2P clients;
• The presence of a USB 2.0 port in the router for connecting peripheral devices opens up new possibilities of use: it can be used to connect a network printer / MFP or external data storage to organize a file server;
• Updated program Download Master: high download speed and maximum usability.

About this we happily broadcasts the site of the manufacturer. Is it so? We'll see. It's time to buy. Prices, prices in our retail business, as usual, do not please me, Russia, with its frantic cheating. Oh well, we have eBay. The lot was successfully chosen, paid and the parcel was sent by USPS Priority Mail service, all the pleasure with sending it costs 3606 rubles. In our retail ASUS RT-N16 now costs 6,000–6,500 rubles, but this is true, by the way. Everything would be fine if it were not so bad. As usual, problems begin in our territory. Guess “what” am I hinting at? Of course, this is the Post of Russia, as there is a lot in this word, and our customs is not particularly hasty. But this time, it can be said that I was lucky, the package was received by me a month and 5 days after sending, while some packages from China and Hong Kong I have been hanging from where it is not known yet from December 2009. And then there was the hype around customs and devices with encryption, I had to worry a little bit.



But let's not talk about sad things, the package has been received.

Let's see what we have inside

Nothing unusual, standard equipment:

• Router;
• 3 twisted antennas for a router;
• UTP Cat 6 Patch Cord;
• Power adapter;
• Manual;
• Disk with software under Windows.

Software for Windows may be of interest, perhaps, only to the housewife who undertook to configure the router. EZSetup Wizard will allow you to step through all this way, taking care of a simple setup for yourself, using presets for popular Russian Internet providers. Well, we are most interested in the option of manual configuration via the web interface, where we are controlled by, if not all, then almost everything that the ASUS engineers provided and preinstalled for us.



This is where the first disappointment awaits us, but only for those who are faced with network solutions from this company for the first time. For the rest, it’s no secret that the standard firmware leaves much to be desired, ASUS RT-N16 in this regard is by no means an exception, especially considering the relative youth of the product, the latest official firmware is still in the Beta stage, and the very first one without the Beta prefix, which is preinstalled Initially in the device, it is still more similar to the Alpha version. Unstable work, glitches, loss of Wi-Fi connection - here is a short list of the “diseases” of the standard firmware ASUS RT-N16, which, however, I am sure, will be eliminated in the new firmware over time. But everything is not so bad, because the firmware is laid out in the form of open source code.

Alternative firmware

This is where craftsmen perform on the stage. Yes, a few more stones in the garden of native firmware, so praised Download Master only works on downloading, but not on return, contrary to statements on the site. This is easily treated in an alternative firmware, for me personally the choice is obvious - Transmission, for someone it's rTorrent, Deluge, etc. Everyone chooses himself.









Many people know that Oleg is one of the pioneers in alternative firmware for network devices from ASUS, many have this name at the hearing. But, unfortunately, recently he has devoted little of his time to this. However, it can be understood. As a result, what do we have? And we have native firmware and 4 alternative ones. In order.

- The first alternative firmware is nothing more than a bug fix from Oleg on the basis of Beta firmware versions;

- The second is the well-known DD-WRT in foreign communities;

- The third is also the Tomato firmware common in foreign communities;

- And finally, the fourth, known as firmware from enthusiasts , followers of Oleg, has absorbed the spirit of his creation and is based on his work.

Let's walk a little on each of them.

The first is the bug fixes from Oleg himself, made without much attention, which are given to ASUSTeK engineers and subsequently appear in subsequent beta. The option is not bad, but not yet brought to its logical conclusion. In addition, you yourself understand that we are not talking about any additional functionality, only bug fixes.



The second alternative firmware is of great interest, as it is the most functional right out of the box, so many services are stuffed that you simply wonder, and all this is easily controlled from a rather convenient and functional web interface. But the firmware for this device cheese, perhaps for now, but the way it is. At the same time, abroad seem to have little idea how to implement the L2TP protocol. Working with this firmware, many complain about the device overheating. Well, let's leave it until better times, perhaps after some time the situation will improve.



On the third firmware, Tomato, I can say little, besides all the same problems with the implementation of the L2TP protocol.



We come to the most interesting, to the firmware from enthusiasts . It clearly traces the ideology and implementation peculiar to Olegovskoy firmware. It makes me happy. It also makes me happy that its web interface draws from previous versions and is an exact copy that was available in my WL-500W. The native interface is so overloaded, overwhelmed with graphics, completely unnecessary Ajax features. Horror. This is a router, gentlemen, developers, and not Filkina letter. It is carefully tuned once and is forgotten for a long time until a new piece of iron appears in the arsenal, the settings for which need to be registered in the router. The old interface used in the firmware of enthusiasts is simple and austere.















Well, the decision was made, the firmware from enthusiasts was installed, all the settings were made, through the terminal additional software was installed on the external hard disk connected to these tests. I will explain a little why for tests. It's simple: Acer Aspire Revo with 1TB on a trailer serves me as a home server, it already performs the functions of a sidbox, a web server, a Samba server, a Backup server and other tasks, we will not go into details. Therefore, in fact, I do not need all the bells and whistles of our router. But for a review I just have to test them. Well, no problems with this arose, everything was established and earned without any questions, while again I caught myself thinking that everything was exactly the same as on the WL-500W, simple and most importantly - efficient. Well, let's test the speed characteristics and how the router will behave at high loads. I did not discover anything unexpected and this time, the speed via Wi-Fi from MacBook to server via SFtp was 11 MBytes / sec. Copying from computer to computer with gigabit network cards - from 70 to 85 MB / s. Let's load the 45th router simultaneously put on distribution by torrents and 5th on a jump, with a channel of 4.5 Mbps, and also let us send a video stream on the Popcorn Hour A110 via SMB, it will be 720p BDRip macbook Result: no gaps, drops, glitches and other things during hour testing. Well, that was what I expected. The router has been testing for exactly 1 week, during this time there was only one break of Internet communication using the L2TP protocol, 4 days after the start of testing, the Beeline provider. I am completely satisfied with these indicators, I observed the same picture on the WL-500W.



It's time to draw some conclusions. Whether the worthy piece turned out? Of course. Should I give preference to her, and not the WL-500W? Of course. But is it worth it to hurry to change the WL-500W to RT-N16? My answer is no. Yes, an incredibly powerful processor (480 MHz versus 264 MHz, although the potential of the BCM4718 is generally 533 MHz, it was a little slaughtered) built on the MIPS architecture, yes, gigabit ports, yes, finally the 802.11n standard was introduced Yes, the amount of RAM increased several times (128 MB DDR2 versus 32 MB DDR), yes, removable antennas. If for you one of these criteria is critical, then you can also change the device, otherwise there is no point in changing the flawlessly working WL-500W on the Oleg firmware. Although, if you amuse your geeky soul, and at the same time give someone an old model, as I will do, for example, then why not.



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Author's article © ZeroChaos