Prior to buying this router I had used a U.S. Robotics wireless G router (usr5461) for the last several years. That router had been very stable and like the Rt-N16 it had a built-in wireless print server. I've subscribed to Major League Baseball's tv over the internet for several years as well, but in the last year or two as the web feed was upgraded to near-hd quality, the demands on the router became too great and my laptop had to buffer too often when streaming the games. So I looked for a wireless n router with a print server as well and found this one had good reviews so I went for it. I bought it in August 2010, and originally used Asus' firmware/software, which worked pretty well, although my laptop would only connect at 130mb/sec. I can do some things with computers but am by no means a true techie, but still I wanted to try the 3rd party firmware, Tomato. So last month, following a very easy to understand install guide someone put on the web I downloaded and installed Tomato, without "bricking" my router. Tomato's user interface is pretty simple and straight-forward, it was real easy to set up the print server, and my external hard drive was immediately recognized too. The router seems more stable as well, but the biggest change was now my laptop connects at 300mb/second. My house is only about 1600 sq ft, and the router is in my living room in the middle of my house, but I recently checked the signal at my backyard fence and still had "good" connection with 3 bars and could stream Hulu videos just fine. That's about 80 ft away from the router and through brick siding. Needless to say the signal is excellent here inside the house. I can easily surf and stream online video as well as tv shows from Windows Media Center on my main pc to my laptop anywhere in my house, without hesitation. Yeah, I like this router!
Update - March 6, 2011 - Still really pleased with the router, great signal and all. The only added comment I have is that after using an external hard drive attached to the router, I wonder why most people would even want that feature. The reason is transfers of files to and from hard drives thru a router in this way are soooo sloooooowwwww! I was lucky to get 2mb per second when moving files to the drive. Turns out this is very common for NAS, not an Asus problem. So for my home use, I just connected the drive back to my pc and share the folders with my network, and only use the usb port for my printer (which IS very useful). I guess in a business setting where smaller sized files are being stored on the NAS the feature could be fine, just not for my small household network.
Update - March 11, 2012 - Router is still working as well as it always has, haven't rebooted in months, and even then it was when I had actually lost my dsl signal to the modem, not this router's fault. Still using wireless printing to my Canon MP530 printer. I did find however that I can't use the scanner if my printer's plugged into the router; when I scan I must move the usb to my pc's usb hub, scan whatever, then plug back into router for normal wireless printing. There may be a way to scan with the router connected, I'm just to lazy to try and I don't use the scanner very often anyway. Oh, and I'm still using the Tomato-usb firmware that I flashed to the router last year, rock-solid!
Update - August 10, 2014 - Is this Asus router still working? Why yes it is! Hard to believe it's been over 2 years since the last update. I don't even think about the router, unless someone comes over who needs the wifi key, it just keeps working... well. I've probably rebooted it 5 or 6 times since my last update, and in the majority of those reboots my local phone company was having a city-wide dsl outage. Haven't made any changes since the Tomato USB flash, and the laptop I'm typing this update on is connected via wifi right now. Being in west Texas, though, I do have to dust the unit every now and then. How long with it last? Check back in another year or two to find out!
Update - August 16, 2015 - Nothing new to report. Router still working solidly, no hiccups. Am in the middle of MLB season and am streaming games thru my Roku 3, flawless.
Update - February 24, 2017 - I packed the router and my other belongings last year and moved across the country. Took out the router from storage last week to use at my folks house ( they had a cheapo Encore router that wasn't working so well), and the Asus is working just as good as the day I set it up back in August of 2010. The only other computer-related product I've had last this long is my trusty old 17" Acer laptop which I bought in March of that same year, and is still working well. Quite the workhorses.
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This Item  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 |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | $82.79 | -32% $33.90 List: $49.90 | -23% $99.99 List: $129.99 | -27% $94.99 List: $129.99 | -33% $66.76 List: $99.99 | $59.99 |
| Delivery | Get it Apr 10 - 12 | Get it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 10 | Get it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 10 | Get it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 10 | Get it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 10 | Get it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 10 |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
| WiFi signal | ||||||
| User interface | ||||||
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| Value for money | ||||||
| Sold By | NetBetShop | GL Technologies | Reyee Direct | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| connectivity tech | Ethernet | Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB | Ethernet | Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB | Ethernet |
| number of ports | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| data transfer rate | 300 megabits per second | 1200 megabits per second | 3200 megabits per second | 2976 megabits per second | 1 gigabits per second | 1 gigabits per second |
| wireless standard | 802 11 N | 802 11 AC | 802 11 AX, 802 11 AC, 802 11 N, 802 11 G, 802 11 B | 802 11 AX, 802 11 AC, 802 11 B, 802 11 G, 802 11 N | 802 11 A, 802 11 AC, 802 11 AX, 802 11 B, 802 11 G | 802 11 AX |
| frequency band class | single band | dual band | dual band | dual band | dual band | single band |
| lan port bandwidth | 10/100/1000 megabits per second | 10/100/1000 megabits per second | 10/100 megabits per second | 10/100/1000 Mbps | Gigabit Ethernet | 10/100/1000 Mbps |
| security protocol | WEP, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK | — | WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK encryption | WPA3, WPA2-Enterprise, WPA2-PSK | WPA2-PSK, WPA-PSK, WPA2-Enterprise | — |
Reviews with images
Rock solid performance
I've had this router since December 2010. I initially installed DD-WRT on it and ran that for 8 months, and in that time it ran very well. I decided to change to a custom version of Tomato by Shibby to unlock some more logging potential and I could not be happier. This router has been bulletproof since installing Tomato. In over 2 years time, it has only been rebooted once, and the reason why is I had a prolonged power outage and my 1500VA UPS eventually was drained of battery life. Before it had lost power, the uptime was just short of 1 year at 360 days...It has not lost power since that day, and the router stats is showing that it has an uptime of nearly 407 days, and it's still going strong!The wireless signal always seems to be strong regardless of where I'm at in my house. I never lose wireless connectivity either. I have multiple computers that are tied together via gigabit Ethernet, including my 13TB server, and have not had any issues with transferring small or large files. I can consistently transfer at 105MB/s from my main workstation to the server on files that are up to 40GB in size.
Top reviews from other countries
The Associate
Fantastic, finally stock firmware fixed! But then it died...
Reviewed in Canada on January 3, 2014
The Associate
Reviewed in Canada on January 3, 2014
When I bought it, the stock firmware was sloooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, hanged often and straight up crashed sometimes, angered me to hell and back...
BUT that's okay! Because the firmware's gotten an update some many months ago and it's smooth as butter, finally! =D
Other then that, I never had 1 issue with this router, ever. Never had to reset it or turn it off. No wireless connections issues on ANY product ever, 1 laptop (macbook pro), a PS3, XBob 360, 5 different cell phones, 2 tv's, a 3DS XL, a PSP3000, even my neighbors once when I forgot to put a password for my wifi, have all connected flawlessly and have always had constant speeds to date; except my neighbor, who lost connection after a pw was setup :)
To be fair, most electronics are used in the vicinity of the router, BUT, even behind 4 walls on the other end of my apartment on the balcony, I have good reception on my cell (that I can remember...)
So even for a user who doesn't want to mess with making the router better with custom firmware and yada wtv, it works perfectly =D
**EDIT**
Well well, weird that so soon after my review my wan ports all died during the 2nd week of february...
Internet no longer works with wired connections, on both cat5e and cat6 cables.
WiFi on the other hand works no problem, so then I did some research, then I saw the many 1 star reviews of the EXACT same problem on newegg.ca
Here's to hoping my Asus support does not go as bad as many others :S
If it does, this is dropping to 1 star, since it's sort of a piss off that I buy an expensive router from a supposedly renowned company for quality products only to have it die while 2 other $20-$40 routers I have owned in the past both lasted 5+ years each and were only replaced to quite literally waste my money on needless upgrades :(
Images in this review
Tee Rex
Gaming router NAY, amazeballs router?! Yes!
Reviewed in Canada on October 20, 2014
