Asus N66U or newer AC version?

[zzm9980]

Ok, a bit of my own research shows stiwi is right. It seems the AC56U runs a faster clock speed by default than the AC66U. The 3x faster comparison in this thread though seems to be between the NT-66U and AC56U.

Here are some CPU benchmarks of the various models so you can extrapolate rough performance:
http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?30444 ... %231074%3B


Depending on your distance from the router it could be a wash, since the Wifi coverage from the AC66U should be significantly better.

The thread discussing this:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showt ... 315&page=1

The take-away from that thread is someone OC'd his AC56U by 50%(!) and the VPN performance went from an average throughput of 13Mb/sec to 16Mb/sec. Not sure I'd do that.

[stiwi]

Why do you say the RT-AC56U is faster than the RT-AC66U? From the official specs, they're essentially the same thing, only the 66 has a third antenna (and transmitter) for faster 3x wireless. The 56 is 2x wireless.

I see nothing that would indicate the 56 would have better VPN performance. Do you have a source? I'd be curious to see it.

RT-AC56U use dual-core 800MHz:
http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/asus_r ... outer.html

RT-AC66U is single-core 600MHz:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showp ... stcount=14

VPN speed comparison between the two:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showp ... ostcount=4

RT-AC56U being 3x faster due to more processing power.

RT-AC56U is available now at S$279 in Challenger.

[x9200]

Almost exactly one year after putting it to a regular use my N66U just encountered a failure that disqualifies it for any further serious use. During minor cable rearrangement it just reset itself to the factory defaults leaving all insecure with the default admin password.

[zzm9980]

I've personally moved to Ubiquity UniFi APs:
http://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/

The AP-LR model at $89 USD has such amazing range and performance it blows away anything else I've tried. Caveats: It isn't a router (still using N66 for that) and the model at this price is 2.4Ghz only. But it truly outperforms (at least in my house) even the N66 @5Ghz from anywhere more than 5m from the AP. I have nearly perfect signal 2 stories directly up on my roof deck. The N66 in the same locations gives me about 50% indicated signal strength, but significant latency and packet loss. My LTE connection on the roof is much better than the N66's wifi, but the Ubiquiti gives me 100mb/sec+ over 2.4ghz 802.11n.

[x9200]

I have just bought it (the LR model). An interesting product. While the signal is not really any (significantly) stronger - well, I use some higher gain antennas with the Asustek, but the performance seems twice as good for the 2.4GHz band running on the same channel. I just checked it piping /dev/zero from my mac air over an ssh tunnel to /dev/null to a server behind the router.

Also pretty interesting approach to do the whole management through ssh (this is the only port I found open). You can log in via ssh and what is inside looks pretty much like an openwrt base runnig 2.6 linux kernel.

[zzm9980]

I have just bought it (the LR model).

Curious, did you find it available in Singapore, or did you order online? If so, from where/at what cost?

[x9200]

I have just bought it (the LR model).

Curious, did you find it available in Singapore, or did you order online? If so, from where/at what cost?

I bought it locally. I found it in two places only: one was with the ridiculous price of >SGD300 and the other one was Bizgram at SLS selling it currently for $151 (I managed to get it for $139). In July Bizgram had some sort of promotion and was selling it for 115.

[aster]

If bandwidth wasn't an issue I'd get a tried & tested Linksys WRT-54GL that first appeared almost a decade ago and was stable as a rock. Linksys is back with a new model that resembles the old one in design but is now in the same league as Asus' top model.

Having said that, I do have the newest Asus as my ISP had an offer that was too good to turn down. It works well even though I am not a fan of the Asus backend.

[x9200]

I had been using WRT-54GL with Openwrt for over 7 years. It is an excellent piece of equipment. I switched to N66U hoping for some performance improvement and there was some but nothing really significant (2.4GHz). But it works few good times faster over the 5GHz link.

[aster]

I had been using WRT-54GL with Openwrt for over 7 years. It is an excellent piece of equipment. I switched to N66U hoping for some performance improvement and there was some but nothing really significant (2.4GHz). But it works few good times faster over the 5GHz link.

That piece of hardware is simply a classic. It is also probably the only device that I no longer use but have not given away or thrown out - there's just too much sentimental value there.

The WRT-54GL was very stable, had a good backend (though even better with operwrt), good range for the supported wifi standards, good throughput, I really can't fault it in any way even today (apart from the fact that newer wifi protocols have appeared since then).

[zzm9980]

Strange. I went through a few WRT54Gs years ago and they had a tendency to die every 6-8 months. At their low cost (at the time) it wasn't a big deal, I'd just pick a new one up.

The new one seems to just be trying to capitalize on the name and the fame. It's quite expensive for what it is now, and has a really ugly retro look. Reminds me of those Ford Thunderbirds that came out last decade trying to copy the 50s styling.

[x9200]

They are different pieces of hardware. Apparently Linksys started to cut down costs at one point so for example WRT54G v1.x had more RAM than some succeeding versions (>4) of the same model. Who knows what else they modified to reduce the costs for some other models of the same family.

The GL model was introduced separately after the v.4 I believe and seems to be an equivalent of the earlier versions of the G models with plenty of RAM. The firmware is Linux based.
I have another one at my FiL's back in Europe, with the original firmware running at this point I believe its 9th year.
The GLs are still being manufactured and sold what is a good indication how good this product is. This is a 12 years old design. I don't think there are many products in computer electronics like this.

(edited to correct some info)

[aster]

The new one seems to just be trying to capitalize on the name and the fame. It's quite expensive for what it is now, and has a really ugly retro look. Reminds me of those Ford Thunderbirds that came out last decade trying to copy the 50s styling.

Nice comparison. The new one is quite good though, so they have done a proper job with the internals.

I recently installed a new router for my parents, and since they live in a house (with rather thick walls) I was looking for range as the #1 factor and everything else was secondary. The new Asus edged out the new Linksys in this department and was the only reason that I opted for it.

But it's good to see Linksys back with some decent hardware, and the retro-style look must mean that someone has caught on that they used to do better in the past.