Customer Reviews

ASUS WL-520GU Wireless Router

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This router router can do a lot more if you replace the original firmware with DD-WRT, Tomato or OpenWRT:

VPN, OpenVPN, NAS, BitTorrent, radio output power control, Wireless Print server, etc. It is possible to use a USB hub to connect several devices including printers.

Possibilities are endless.

I want to preface this review with a warning, if you don't intend to use Tomato or DDWRT firmware on this device then DO NOT purchase it! That being said, I popped this out of the box and installed Tomato ND almost immediately. The general consensus on the stock firmware is that it is abysmal and not worth touching!

So far I have three of these running, one at home and two at the office. All of them have been running flawlessly for months. I think my longest runtime is 80 days, but only due to power outages! The office ones are also running WDS, with the main one running a modified Tomato ND version with OpenVPN, which also works flawlessly.

I was slightly concerned about ventilation on these boxes, as they are just plastic with two minor vents yet I haven't had any issues. One of the office WDS links is running in an unventilated computer cabinet and hasn't had so much as a hiccup. One thing to note on WDS though is that I was unable to get them to run unless I used WPA/AES, TKIP would not work at all. This isn't a big deal, but is counterintuitive during setup.

Whether you choose to run Tomato ND or DDWRT is entirely up to you, but I don't think you will be disappointed with either one! Initial setup can be daunting for the technically challenged, but there are walk through guides out there. Definitely worth every penny, especially if you can get one with a rebate!

UPDATE: Just wanted to update everyone. I thought my uptime record for one of these boxes was 80 days, but I just checked on one attached to a UPS and it came in at an incredible 230 days!!! To me that speaks volumes about these little boxes.

Just as so many people have said this before, make sure you grab the DD-WRT firmware or the tomato firmware with the teddy bear mod and you should be just fine. its an amazing product. I havn't had it go down once in the last month I have had it. It pairs nicely with my Linksys m100 cable modem for Comcast. I am pushing close to 20 Mbps constant. I was very concerned about how much power this USB port had on it and if I needed a powered USB splitter or not. Well I took the risk and I have a 4 port Belkin Mini Hub (F5U407) connected to it so I can connect my printer and my usb HDD to it and it works great! Tomato allows me to run a FTP and opendns all with my dyndns account always being updated without a computer which is very nice. I used duct tape and taped the hub to the top of the device and it looks good. I am getting a super fast connetion to the internet through my wireless although I havn't ran it through any tests its plenty fast for online gaming. Also I run a media center from my PC to laptop that connects via HDMI to my plasma and it works fantastic, not one hiccup during movies or music so far.
The deivce doesn't seem to get hot at all. just a slight warm. all in all it looks good, works as it should, and just blows past my expectations.
The only thing that would have been nice is 802.11n support but right now I am ok with it.

I do not believe this is a first time router. If you have never setup a router before I would probably go with a Linksys or Netgear. Or if you are confident you do not need support from Asus to set it up out of box, then I would get it.

It is VERY easy to setup with the browser setup, but Asus *support* is lackluster. Their website is slow or unresponsive at times or may not even come up (blank page). The customer service reps are very nice and professional, but I found a few to not know the products I call in for and feel they are reading off a script.

That being said, I love this router. I run dd-wrt on it as well and it rock solid. The default firmware seems good and probably works for the general public perfectly fine. DD-wrt allows me to run a print, web, and nas server off a usb hub connected to the usb port. Seems well designed / ventilated because it runs no where near burning hot like a Netgear router I have. The range works great and I see no problems in my two story townhome with any connectivity issues. Matter of fact I see 5 out of 5 bars while I'm one story above the router on the second floor on my laptop.

I use the ASUS WL-520gu, loaded with Tomato 1.28 (ND), for my business.

Very stable device and the price is right. Free shipping by Amazon is a plus.

Flashing Tomato is a bit of a problem because it cannot be done with the installed ASUS firmware.

You must first downgrade an older version of the ASUS firmware, namely WL520gu_2.0.0.8_EN.tr. Get it from the ASUS web site.

Next rename the tomato.ND.trx firmware to WL520gu_2.0.0.9_EN.trx to fool any sanity checks in the downloader software.

Finally flash the re-named tomato firmware.

I do this using my MacBook Pro (Mac OS X 10.7.2) and Safari.

Please note that tomato 1.28 does NOT support the USB port in the router. I don't need it for my system.

Tomato works great on the WL-529gu.

---Bernie

To install Tomato ND 1.28, I had to download the old 2.0.0.8 firmware from the Asus website. This unit came loaded with a newer firmware that rejected the Tomato image. After Tomato was set up, everything worked great! The range of this unit is so much better than the Linksys I had before. At the default power levels, it easily goes through my granite floors into the basement and I get a strong signal from across the yard and across the street.

When our last custom firmware router started giving us problems, we got tired of the scheduled reboot fix for it and bought one of these.

The best I can say is that my Mom no longer calls about router issues with the one I put at her house and we haven't thought about our router since I installed it. Really a great device to flash to DD-WRT for a no worry router.

I used a second one of these with DD-WRT to bridge Mom's WiFi over to the Sisters house (150 feet away) and allow them to share the same internet. I added a large 18 db gain antenna on the source router to get extra range.

Pros:
DD-WRT and Tomato compatible. If you do not know what they are, google it and spend some time reading up on it.
USB port, great for sharing printers and HDDs on your home wireless network
By far the easiest router to install Tomato on (from wikibooks):
1. If the device has OEM firmware version 3.x or later, then you need to revert it to a pre-3.x version, first.
2. Downloading and unpack the "ND" version of Tomato firmware, rename the file to "WL520gu_2.0.0.9_EN.trx".
3. Use the OEM menus to update the firmware with the renamed Tomato file.

Cons:
OEM Firmware is terrible
Need to use CUPS drivers for Mac and/or Unix/Linux people
Router runs slow every once in awhile

OEM router is terrible. UI looks like crap and and it runs like crap. USB printing was spoty and the router internet connection would drop every 5 mins with the Asus FW. Most people who bought this router bought it for its DD-WRT capabilities and the USB port. If you do not plan to flash it, go find another router that is more stable. Once flashed, however, this router is just amazing. It does what ever you want with DDWRT, Tomato or any other open firmware. You can share the USB port over your network. I usually share a laser printer on it, and I am able to print whereever I want in my house. USB HDD's work too if you want to have a networked drive. The only real downside is that if you do use it as a print server with Macs, make sure the drivers are CUPS drivers. Build quality is ok for the router, its not heavy and doesnt feel substantial. Antenna is removable. There are slots on the bottom for wall mounting. Bottom line, this is a great router for the price to convert in a super router if youre willing to spend 5 mins reflashing the firmware.

I am very happy with this router. Ia m using the stock firmware(against suggestions) because I just wanted to see if it works.
I am not doing any gaming so take it for what it is worth. Gamers should build their own routers anyway :D. (ha)
I DO stream video to a Roku box while surfing on several devices
We have a samsung personal laser printer connected to the USB Port. Everything works flawlessly.
They put in an EZQos screen.....Dont' know how useful it will be, so I haven't touched it yet. Maybe I will if I start running into performance issues.

Asus Firmware : 18-19Mbps
DD-WRT/Tomato : 10-14Mbps

Using FW_WL520gu_3008_TW.zip downloaded from Asus website, I was able to consistently get 18Mbps to 19Mbps of wireless download speed from my internet connection compared to 10Mbps - 14Mbps from either DD-WRT (14929 build) or Tomato (1.28). I have spent hours tweaking dd-wrt and tomato wireless settings, including transmit power, and trying different versions, yet NOTHING comes close to the 18-19Mbps I was getting right off the bat from Asus firmware. Considering I was getting 20Mbps with a direct wired connection to the Comcast cable modem, 18-19mbps is pretty darn good performance.

Also, on the USB side - I plugged in my HP 1050 printer and viola, the Asus GUI shows the printer enabled right away.

Sure, the Asus firmware may not offer all the hooks compared to dd-wrt/tomato, but I can already see plenty of configurations and options in the Asus GUI.

So, in short, I don't know why other reviewers complain so much about Asus FW. It's been working well for me at least in terms of speed, in fact, better than 3rd party firmware. I would encourage anyone buying the router to at least try out the asus firmware (either the version that comes with it, or download one from asus support website).