Customer Reviews

ASUS (RT-N16) Wireless-N 300 Maximum Performance single band Gaming Router: Fast Gigabit Ethernet, support USB-Hard Drive and Printer and Open source DDWRT

5 star:		(85)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I have been looking for a router with decent range, speed, support for USB based external NTFS drives and last but not the least, good QoS support for VoIP phones. Another important thing that perhaps everyone wants but forgets to mention is reliability. I expect it to keep on working once it has been setup.

I have had this router for just couple of days so far and cannot comment on reliability yet, but other requirements have been met quite well. The specs were something to die for - 480MHz (capable of 533MHz) processor, 128MB RAM, 32MB ROM and runs Linux with support for bittorrent and FTP right in the firmware. Even the firmware source code is GPLed and anyone with a bit of knowledge in this area can improve it. In fact, DD-WRT (an open source Linux based firmware) is already available and works quite well with this router.

With DD-WRT installed on this router, it becomes quite a powerful computer that can serve as a web server as well as a NAS once you connect an external hard drive to the USB port. QoS and Port Forwarding have been implemented quite well in DD-WRT and is the main reason why I had to install DD-WRT within few hours of receiving the router.

[...]

I would have given the router a 4.5 rating if I could as the firmware it came with had a few bugs. I could never get port forwarding to work and also QoS setup in the original firmware is limited.

Here are some pros -

1. Gigabit ethernet, excellent processor and so the performance. Asus claims 300,000 concurrent sessions, which should be enough to handle even commercial hotspots with hundred users.

2. It has 2 USB ports that support various devices. One could connect a USB printer and a cheap external hard drive at the same time. The printer would work as a network printer (available to all computers in the network) and the USB hard drive will be available as Network Attached Storage to everyone without paying hundreds for one such device.

3. DD-WRT availability. They are constantly improving and adding features. QoS (Quality of Service) is one such feature that is needed in any household that has a VoIP phone and lot of online activity in the background like uploading videos to youtube, p2p, online gaming etc. With proper QoS setup phone service or online gaming shouldn't be affected even with other large scale online activity.

4. The original firmware is image based and looks quite nice. I found it very intuitive.

Cons -

1. Should have been dual band (separate bands for G and N traffic), the chipset supports it. I am running in mixed mode as several of my devices (iPhone, Fuze, Wii) support only G mode and in mixed G/N mode, N components operate predominantly at G speed.

2. The original firmware is buggy and I couldn't get port forwarding to work reliably after several tries. QoS, the main reason behind me upgrading from a D-Link, is not implemented as well as I expected. DD-WRT fixes both issues but first-time owners may not be savvy enough to reload a 3rd-party firmware on their brand new router.

All in all, it's an excellent purchase for the capability and price, especially when you consider Cisco charges more (sometimes twice) for routers with slower processors and much less RAM and flash memory.

Update: Updated the links since Amazon yanked them. Also would like to add that the reliability is quite good so far with DD-WRT. Has been running for 3 days straight and no issues/slowdown etc.

First off, let me say here and now that a good router is one of the most difficult components to choose. I had some specific requirements which were as follows...

1) Stable wireless signal, ie not dropping all the time, also decent range and good throughput.

2) At least 4 gigabit ports for switching.

3) Dual band simultaneous

4) DD-WRT support.

5) NOT be a linksys (last 2 experiences were horrible)

6) $100us or less

Honestly, I went into this thing looking for a dual band router, specifically a simultaneous dual band router. All of them though apparently suffered from poor 5ghz range, throughput or some shortcoming or the other. I looked around and found a whopping total of 1 device I have that uses a dual band wireless card. So really, whats the advantage of dual band if the 5ghz is weak and slow. What do we do with the weak and slow? Shoot it. So I shot the 5ghz most humanely.


From there, my choice became clear. I have been playing with this asus for a few days now with DD-WRT and its great. You are able to create policies that will block torrent access via ports. You can also select specific clients to which the policy is applicable. There are also time of day settings where all policies can be implemented on the DAY and TIME you want. VERY sexy. So ive set up a policy on mine that can block ALL torrent access while keeping the Internet accessible.

There's also a dedicated internet killing option that totally kills ALL internet access, leaving only local file access in tact. Again, this can be set on an individual client basis.


At first I had a lot of issues with the wireless signal dropping during file transfers even with Asus' latest firmware. After much frustration, it turned out to be the wireless adapter I was using was faulty. I switched over to another and instantly the problem went away.

So far I just managed to get a solid, stable 150Mbps using a Belkin expresscard adapter while another laptop with the Intel 5300agn adapter reached 300Mbps quite easily. Even so, strangely enough, I got faster transfer rates with the Belkin using Windows 7 despite its slower connection speed.

The wireless coverage is sufficient as all areas of the small-medium single level house receive at least a 'good' Windows signal rating through a mixture of wood partitions and concrete walls. While the Asus will be used primarily for N connections on channel 6, I also have a Linksys RT160n on channel 1 as a secondary access point to handle guest machines and wireless g connections.


I've heard many complain about overheating on this unit but while transferring data through both wired and wireless connections simultaneously in a ~ 26c room, it NEVER gets more than slightly warm to the touch.

In closing, here are some pro's and cons I have identified in my week with this router.

Pros

1) Blazing wired performance through its 1Gbps switching ports
2) Fast, stable wireless connections that have not dropped as far as I have observed
3) dd-wrt compatible for accessing advanced features (MUCH better than the default firmware)
4) Strong dd-wrt community support and updates (there is a lot of help available for this router on their forums.
5) Aesthetically pleasing
6) Fast cpu, memory and storage
7) Blue lights are a nice touch

Cons

1) USB drive setup using dd-wrt is a bit challenging (not a fault of the router itself)

I use this router for a specialized dd-wrt application. I runs fast and is easy to upgrade to dd-wrt. I particularly like all the storage and memory on this thing. It's got 32 MB of flash and 128 MB of memory and a 480 mhz processor, which is over twice as fast as the WRT54GL.

The downside is that the TX power is calibrated differently than most dd-wrt routers and defaults to 17. That's where it needs to stay. If you try to move much off of that, the router starts acting very flakey.

I've had this router for a few weeks now. I gave it 3 stars because of the stock firmware, once the firmware is working its an outstanding router.

The firmware that comes with it is terrible. My bandwidth was dropping from to 20mbps after a reboot to about 4mbps after 8 hours of uptime and the asus firmware has no auto-reboot feature that I could find. If you have no intentions of flashing to different versions of the firmware then buy another router. The most up to date firmware that I used was version 9.9.3.7. Hopefully they will come up with some fixes. Firmware and support can be found here: [...]

The first alternative firmware that I tried was DD-WRT. Its a big improvement over the asus firmware. My biggest complaint with DD-WRT was that I could not get the USB printer to work. Note, I was able to get it to work with the asus firmware but it would only print part of the page. With DD-WRT it seemed like there was a lof of Linux commands to get it to work with the printer and usb share. Reference: [...]

Because I wanted to get the printer to work I tried a third firmware called tomato. Tomato has a lot of commonality with DD-WRT (both run linux on the RT-N16) but I have never needed to do anything from the command line. Also, I have printer sharing and USB file sharing (1 terabyte USB drive) working. The traffic graphing seems better with the Tomato firmware then DD-WRT or asus firmware (which didn't do it at all). My biggest complaint about tomato is that there is less documentation than DD-WRT. That being said, I haven't needed to read the documentation to the extent that I had to read the DD-WRT docs. Reference: [...]

I think DD-WRT may be superior to tomato in the area of customization but I'm not sure. It seems like everyone customizes DD-WRT in one way or another while tomato users seem to use the gui that came with the firmware. The ability to customize may sound great but if its a requirement to get it to work and a pain in the butt to do then the joy of customizing starts to wear off pretty quickly.

I installed new firmware at least 6 times in the last 2 weeks before I finally settled on tomato. Each time was a nerve racking experience and I was convinced that I would brick the router. Fortunately it all worked out.

The hardware in the router seems really nice: I'm not an expert but as far as I can tell the processor, amount of ram and memory in this router is much better to the competition. The network connections seem to work fine. The wireless seems to work well. My antennas are always loose and flopping around but I think I can fix that by inserting an o-ring between each antenna and the chassis.

Overall its a great router once you get the firmware straightened out.

I recommend one of the following:
a) If you are the type of person who will not flash the router then buy a different router
b) By the time that you read this asus may have fixed their firmware. Read their forum at [...]
P_ID=WAa6AQFncrceRBEo&templete=2 and see if they have anything newer than 9.9.3.7.
If they do then download it and the stock firmware includes an admin tool to install it fairly easily.
c) If you don't like the asus firmware load tomato by following the instructions on this page ([...]). Note: These instructions require you to first flash to DD-WRT. Make sure that you: Save copies of any web pages with install notes before flashing, find out what the default password is before flashing, download both DD-WRT and Tomato before flashing to DD-WRT, make sure to reset the flash memory after flashing the bios by using the reset button.

I also purchased this router based on a recommendation from the team at DD-WRT. I have been using a WRT-54G for several years and have always been a fan of the specialized firmware DD-WRT offers.

Let me just say this thing is a night-and-day difference between any Linksys router I have tried. When using the internal web configuration this thing is FAST (both on the stock firmware, and with DD-WRT flashed on it). I was actually pretty impressed with the stock firmware's configuration and could have been happy even leaving that on there, except for a few advanced features which were missing.

The presence of two USB ports is also very nice. These can be used for FTP storage, or sharing a printer with special firmware. Highly, highly recommended. For the price this has a substantial amount of horsepower, even on the stock firmware I had no problem running hundreds of connections which used to slow down my Linksys routers.

This is the first router I've used with DD-WRT so I am not comparing this router with other DD-WRT compatible routers.

At this point my RT-N16 is connected to a USB hard drive and, in addition to being a wireless router, is also:
- a Samba server for sharing files among Windows and Linux machines on my local network
- a backup server for local machines
- a subversion code repository

One of the nice things about this router, from the firmware flashing perspective, is that the WPS button on the back can be used to tell it to download a new firmware, even if it's otherwise unresponsive. At one point I managed to get my RT-N16's firmware so messed up that I couldn't access it at all. The WPS trick (push the WPS button while plugging it in) saved me from a bricked router.

I bought this router specifically for the hardware in the box and the capability to run my own firmware on it, and I have been very happy with my purchase. If that's what you're planning to do, I highly recommend the RT-N16.

I bought this router because of its two USB ports; they let you connect a hard drive and a printer - and they become accessible by everyone on the network. Bottom line: this works just as advertised.

I read comments here from people who couldn't get this to work, so I was skeptical at first. I hooked up the router to the cable modem, fired up my browser and it automatically showed the router login page. At first the router didn't want to connect to the cable modem, but I decided it could be the modem's fault too - so I simply power-cycled it once whith the router remaining ON. Tada! Those two now recognized each other and a few clicks later I was connected to the internet. No cryptic settings or addresses, it just worked.

Hooking up the USB hard disk drive (HDD) was a snap. Just plug it in and after clicking on the suggested "status update" link, the drive showed up on the overview picture (pretty neat). I could immediately start browsing around on the HDD. Then I had to read up on the various access choices (read/write right of the "admin", "family", or whatever,...). Just make the right choice and a few clicks later it's all done.

Finally, I connected my laser printer via USB cable and the router recognized it immediately after turning the printer on. The overview page gave me an address for that printer and it was easy to add this with the WINDOWS standard "Add Printer" procedure.

After all that installation work was done (30 minutes max), I walked over to my wife's Mac, just to find out it had already recognized the USB hard drive on the network. I haven't tested the printer on her Mac yet.

On my laptop, I made sure I now operate my modem at a higher speed setting than when I used my old 802.11b. Signal is stronger throughout my house and backyard and it runs much faster than with the old box (just as expected).

Overall - great product, clear enough software interface, all at a great price.

This thing has a hundred more features I'll likely never try, but for the basic stuff with added HDD and printer - it's excellent.

I was blown away with its tech specs and feature list. I ignored some bad reviews thinking that these people probably didnt know what they were doing. My problems started right out of the box when the router would not hold onto my WAN IP. The modem I hooked it up to worked fine with my PC. After a couple hours of frustration I read somewhere that in this scenario the modem & router has to be power cycled for 10 whole mins and turned back on in a particular sequence - modem first. That done, I jotted troubleshooting instructions on a post-it stuck near the router for my wife. I went on to explore other features. As always I got the latest firmware and software from ASUS and installed it; After 10 or so power cycles the router just wouldn't stay online. I had to revert to FW 1.0.1.6 just to keep it running. Next I connected a portable drive to the USB hoping to use the router as a file server. However, it would loose WAN & Wireless signal more frequently with the drive connected. The "Download Master" & torrent feature is a piece of doodoo. The torrent client on the router would not connect to most trackers (especially private) and give dismal through-puts if it even managed to keep running longer than 15 mins. The client utility does not give any info about whats happening to the torrents on the router. It does however give an ugly senseless message when the torrent client on the router crashes. These problems could be because of the portable drive and its power requirements destabilizing the routers functioning. But I get similar problems with USB sticks although not as much.
I keep trying to upgrade every month, thinking I must've goofed up somewhere, giving ASUS the benefit of doubt eachtime. I read people cursing at ASUS and their firmware issues. At one time I saw a firmware release taken off their website without any notice. Needless to say that didnt work either. The same version number returned a couple of months later with a completely different date code & revision history. In conclusion this device has a lot of potential if only ASUS gets their act straight. It is in no way a trusty workhorse to replace your existing router. Tread carefully or you might see your weekends going down the drain.

Gave 4 stars because of the firmware that comes from Asus. Had issues with stability especially wireless. The web management interface is very slow to use. The hardware on the other hand is excellent. It is a shame that such good hardware is saddled with such poor firmware. The good is that there are 3rd party firmware available. I have used the latest from Asus, 1014, firmware without any real improvement.
Have installed for various amounts of time 3 3rd party firmwares, DD-WRT, Tomato and Oleg. All have there good and bad. DD-WRT does not have easy setup of printers or USB drives. Not as stable as the other 2 3rd party. Tomato has some very interesting things. Provides good printer and USB support. Has some interesting things like keeping a record of how much you have transferred to and from the Internet by the day and month. Will give a signal quality for the wireless connections and a scanner to see what other wireless access points there are in your area and what channels. Depending on the version, there are several sub Tomatoes to choose from. The one to use on this router is teddy-bears. It is pretty stable and he is actively improving. The last one I have used it Oleg. This one has the Asus interface (wl-500). Oleg started with the Asus firmware and has done much to improve the reliability. This is probably the most stable of the 3 3rd party firmware. It just works. There also is a very active developer group for Oleg. For me the Oleg software is the most stable and is what I am currently using.
So pros:
Very good fast hardware.
Supported by 3rd party developers that take advantage of the hardware.
Cons:
OEM firmware has issues. If you are going to use as a basic router then you should be happy with the OEM firmware, however other things have issues.

The router arrived DOA. I used the ASUS FW Restoration Utility to flash the latest FW and it was still DOA. Then used that utility to flash TomatoUSB and I was able to at least communicate with the router, one NVRAM clear later and I was in business. That was weird, good thing I planned to use TomatoUSB anyway... My only guess is that the NVRAM was corrupted from the factory, and only a completely different firmware would change enough of it to be able to get in at all and do a full wipe...
With TomatoUSB, the router works wonderfully!
IMPORTANT:
1. Use the version of the FW Restoration Utility included on the bundled CD, not the latest download from the website. I tried the latest version from the website at first and it didn't work, regardless of what FW I was trying to flash.
2. The FW Restoration Utility can only be used if the router is in rescue mode. To force the router into this mode, unplug the power from the router and hold in the restore button as you plug the power back in and hold it until the power light begins to blink. Make sure you have set a static IP on your system before doing this. ASUS documentation recommends 192.168.1.10 (subnet mask 255.255.255.0).