I figured some of you might find this product interesting so I'd do a mini-review of it. Usually routers are just boring boxes we don't spend time thinking about and we certainly don't lust over a router or watch router product launches. But this router is very different to the usual in quite a few substantial ways.
The biggest feature that makes this router unusual is obviously the 802.11ac wireless standard. This is also known as 5th generation WiFi. It offers wireless speeds at 1.3Gb/ps and operates in the 5GHz band. This is in comparison to 802.11n which tops out at 450Mb/ps in the 5GHz band.
Internally this router has some impressive specifications. Four Gigabit Ethernet LAN Ports and a Gigabit WAN port, 256MB of RAM, 32MB of Flash Memory, 802.11a,b,g,n & ac support. 2.4 and 5GHz operation simultaneously for 802.11n whilst maintaining 802.11ac devices at the same time.
It features three removable antennas and can output a maximum of 200mW over those antennas. In my testing I've found the signal to be tremendous. It easily penetrates 3 walls and one floor in my house to provide 75Mb/ps data transfers to our HTPC in the living room over 802.11n 5GHz 450Mb/ps (3x Antenna setup on HTPC & Router). More than enough to stream 1080p movies and TV Shows.
Asus says the router is fully capable of simultaneous 802.11n and 802.11ac culminating in a total of 1.75Gb/ps of peak traffic and although I do not have any 802.11ac devices just yet some reviews I read which did test this confirmed it to be accurate. The routers strong Gigabit ethernet switch compliments its wireless performance and yes it does support 802.11ad which means you can team pairs of ports on the switch resulting in 2Gb/ps between a maximum of two systems when they each also support 802.11ad with port teaming. (For those unfamiliar, you basically hook up two computers to the router, each using two individual gigabit ethernet cables for 2Gb/ps total bandwidth using both cables)
Now with the hardware out of the way it is time to get on to the software. This is usually where routers start to fall short of expectations, good hardware coupled with lousy software. But it would appear that Asus will not suffer from this problem.
There are a few ways I grade router software.
1. Stability - The AC66U gets a 10/10 here, I've had it running for a week and so far no crashing, no unusual behavior, no performance loss over time.
2. Usability - I'd give this an 8/10. Some features are difficult to locate due to strange placement within the firmware but most stuff is easily accessible.
3. Features - 10/10 - there isn't a single thing I need or want that this router doesn't have. I'll go in to more detail in a minute
4. 3rd Party Firmware Compatibility - 5/10 - DD-WRT does not currently support the AC66U but other 3rd party firmwares do and DD-WRT does support the non-AC capable N66U which is basically the same router but with a different radio and according to their forums they will have a DD-WRT firmware available eventually.
Now to dive a little deeper in to some of these software features I first need to mention a hardware feature I left out above. The twin USB 2.0 Ports on the back of the router. You may have seen these on other routers before generally they offer you the ability to plug in a printer or an external hard disk and access those devices over your home network using standard Windows or OS X network sharing protocols.
The AC66U offers both of those familiar features but it also offers some other things as-well because this router has built in iTunes & FTP Servers coupled with Bittorrent, HTTP & eDonkey clients. Yes you can actually hook up two 4TB Hard Drives to the back of this router and do your Bittorrent downloads on it. Asus even supplies a plugin for your browser so that when you click on .torrent files within your browser they will are automatically sent to the router instead of opened locally on your PC.
Another useful feature with these USB ports is the 3G/4G Modem capability. This enables you to plug in a USB 3G/4G Modem and in the event your main internet goes offline for any reason the router automatically switches to the 3G/4G Modem and maintains your connection to the internet through that. Unfortunately this feature is limited to a handful of modems and you can't simply plug in your Android or iPhone to the router and turn on Tethering but still quite an interesting feature and Asus has added quite a few modems to their compatibility chart already.
With such strong internal specifications such as the 256MB of RAM which is just a ridiculous amount for a router you can expect the software to be full of internet management features. Beyond just the standard Port Forwarding and Port Triggering you also have QoS, a DDoS firewall and even basic HTTP packet inspecting with the ability to filter and block web pages and other content that meet a blocklist of phrases. Great for parents or anyone looking to setup their own great firewall of China.
It also features a very good traffic monitor which allows you to view in real time your Internet, Internal Network, 2.4GHz Radio and 5GHz radio traffic utilization. It also logs these statistics so you can view how much traffic you transferred over the internet on a specific day or in a specific month.
Another feature a lot of people want from a high end router these days is Virtual Private Network (VPN) support and this router has that too. Asus also offers two iPhone and Android applications for the router called AiCloud and AiDisk which allow you to access your home network securely through your mobile phone for you to upload & download files to/from your shared disks and play music, view photos & watch videos among other functions.
So overall this is one impressive router. The performance is more than double my older Airport Extreme from Apple which while incredibly stable started to show its age after four years of duty in my household. This Asus router while expensive at £185 GBP is by far the best consumer router on the market and dare I say even a pretty decent small to medium sized business router too. The removable antennas which support high gain aftermarket replacements provide this router with range I've never before achieved from other routers I've owned. This is also the first router I've had where I've not wanted to install DD-WRT because the default software Asus has provided simply works too good has more features than I've ever wanted and looks fantastic.
I'd be happy to answer any questions
The biggest feature that makes this router unusual is obviously the 802.11ac wireless standard. This is also known as 5th generation WiFi. It offers wireless speeds at 1.3Gb/ps and operates in the 5GHz band. This is in comparison to 802.11n which tops out at 450Mb/ps in the 5GHz band.
Internally this router has some impressive specifications. Four Gigabit Ethernet LAN Ports and a Gigabit WAN port, 256MB of RAM, 32MB of Flash Memory, 802.11a,b,g,n & ac support. 2.4 and 5GHz operation simultaneously for 802.11n whilst maintaining 802.11ac devices at the same time.
It features three removable antennas and can output a maximum of 200mW over those antennas. In my testing I've found the signal to be tremendous. It easily penetrates 3 walls and one floor in my house to provide 75Mb/ps data transfers to our HTPC in the living room over 802.11n 5GHz 450Mb/ps (3x Antenna setup on HTPC & Router). More than enough to stream 1080p movies and TV Shows.
Asus says the router is fully capable of simultaneous 802.11n and 802.11ac culminating in a total of 1.75Gb/ps of peak traffic and although I do not have any 802.11ac devices just yet some reviews I read which did test this confirmed it to be accurate. The routers strong Gigabit ethernet switch compliments its wireless performance and yes it does support 802.11ad which means you can team pairs of ports on the switch resulting in 2Gb/ps between a maximum of two systems when they each also support 802.11ad with port teaming. (For those unfamiliar, you basically hook up two computers to the router, each using two individual gigabit ethernet cables for 2Gb/ps total bandwidth using both cables)
Now with the hardware out of the way it is time to get on to the software. This is usually where routers start to fall short of expectations, good hardware coupled with lousy software. But it would appear that Asus will not suffer from this problem.
There are a few ways I grade router software.
1. Stability - The AC66U gets a 10/10 here, I've had it running for a week and so far no crashing, no unusual behavior, no performance loss over time.
2. Usability - I'd give this an 8/10. Some features are difficult to locate due to strange placement within the firmware but most stuff is easily accessible.
3. Features - 10/10 - there isn't a single thing I need or want that this router doesn't have. I'll go in to more detail in a minute
4. 3rd Party Firmware Compatibility - 5/10 - DD-WRT does not currently support the AC66U but other 3rd party firmwares do and DD-WRT does support the non-AC capable N66U which is basically the same router but with a different radio and according to their forums they will have a DD-WRT firmware available eventually.
Now to dive a little deeper in to some of these software features I first need to mention a hardware feature I left out above. The twin USB 2.0 Ports on the back of the router. You may have seen these on other routers before generally they offer you the ability to plug in a printer or an external hard disk and access those devices over your home network using standard Windows or OS X network sharing protocols.
The AC66U offers both of those familiar features but it also offers some other things as-well because this router has built in iTunes & FTP Servers coupled with Bittorrent, HTTP & eDonkey clients. Yes you can actually hook up two 4TB Hard Drives to the back of this router and do your Bittorrent downloads on it. Asus even supplies a plugin for your browser so that when you click on .torrent files within your browser they will are automatically sent to the router instead of opened locally on your PC.
Another useful feature with these USB ports is the 3G/4G Modem capability. This enables you to plug in a USB 3G/4G Modem and in the event your main internet goes offline for any reason the router automatically switches to the 3G/4G Modem and maintains your connection to the internet through that. Unfortunately this feature is limited to a handful of modems and you can't simply plug in your Android or iPhone to the router and turn on Tethering but still quite an interesting feature and Asus has added quite a few modems to their compatibility chart already.
With such strong internal specifications such as the 256MB of RAM which is just a ridiculous amount for a router you can expect the software to be full of internet management features. Beyond just the standard Port Forwarding and Port Triggering you also have QoS, a DDoS firewall and even basic HTTP packet inspecting with the ability to filter and block web pages and other content that meet a blocklist of phrases. Great for parents or anyone looking to setup their own great firewall of China.
It also features a very good traffic monitor which allows you to view in real time your Internet, Internal Network, 2.4GHz Radio and 5GHz radio traffic utilization. It also logs these statistics so you can view how much traffic you transferred over the internet on a specific day or in a specific month.
Another feature a lot of people want from a high end router these days is Virtual Private Network (VPN) support and this router has that too. Asus also offers two iPhone and Android applications for the router called AiCloud and AiDisk which allow you to access your home network securely through your mobile phone for you to upload & download files to/from your shared disks and play music, view photos & watch videos among other functions.
So overall this is one impressive router. The performance is more than double my older Airport Extreme from Apple which while incredibly stable started to show its age after four years of duty in my household. This Asus router while expensive at £185 GBP is by far the best consumer router on the market and dare I say even a pretty decent small to medium sized business router too. The removable antennas which support high gain aftermarket replacements provide this router with range I've never before achieved from other routers I've owned. This is also the first router I've had where I've not wanted to install DD-WRT because the default software Asus has provided simply works too good has more features than I've ever wanted and looks fantastic.
I'd be happy to answer any questions
