ASUS RT-AC68U. ASUS Router

So, it's time to consider a novelty that appeared on the Russian market. This is WiFi router ASUS RT-AC68U from ASUS. This is a dual-band gigabit router that supports all modern standards. This is the second range of 802.11 ac, USB 3.0, most importantly, as well as many other "buns" from Asus, which we will talk about a little later. ASUS RT-AC68U, whose review we will make, according to the manufacturer, is the best on the market.

Packaging

The box shows the ASUS router itself and describes all the technologies that it supports. On the back side is a comparison of different implementations of 802.11 ac technology. There are four types: AC 1900, AC 1750, AC 1200, AC 750. They differ in speed both in the range of 802.11 n and in the range of 802.11 ac. There is also a description of the speed of the router and the support of various technologies, such as, for example, Turbo QAM. The latter allows to increase data exchange. Below is a description of all the ports of the router.

Package Contents ASUS RT-AC68U

In the package, in addition to the device, there is a warranty card, a disc with an installation program, a fairly thick instruction in all languages that you can imagine. With its help, the router will be able to correctly and accurately configure even a beginner. Further in the set there are three antennas. They are removable. This is very good, because on many 802.11 ac routers, and indeed on 5-gigahertz routers, antennas are often not fixed. This often causes some inconvenience. Here, if you need more power WiFi, Asus has provided the opportunity to replace the antenna. In the kit there is a power supply. It is quite solid, immediately striking quality assembly. At the output, it gives 19 V and a current of 1.75 A, which is quite a lot. Usually, home appliances use less voltage. Here it is necessary to ensure the operation of all the declared functions of the router. There is also a full patch cord with all four pairs.

Appearance

Now consider the ASUS router itself. In fact, it is quite simple, but productive. This is what is needed in the modern high-tech world. It has a vertical arrangement on the stand. This stand is not removed, and the horizontal location of the device is not provided by the manufacturer. Developers Asus remained true to themselves. They paid attention and appearance. The front panel of the router is made of dark embossed plastic and looks very stylish. In the upper right corner you can see the golden emblem of the company. At the bottom there are ten luminous indicators. Next in order: the indicators of four Ethernet ports, the indication of access to the Internet, the indication of two USB ports. One is USB 3.0, the other is USB 2.0. Next come the WiFi indicators. Asus provided two frequencies - at 2.4 GHz and at 5 GHz. Ends with all the power indicator of the router. On the right side, there are two buttons: the Wi-Fi on / off button, which is very convenient. The fact is that some people prefer to turn off Wi-Fi at night or go on some long trip. It also fits into the popular concept of energy conservation and safety indicators today. The second button is the Wi-Fi quick setup button , the so-called WPS technology.

On the back there is a switch with four gigabit Ethernet ports, an on / off button, and a reset button for the router. Also here are the power connectors, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, through which you can connect an external hard drive, printer or USB flash drive, making this device network. Next comes the blue-labeled Internet entry - WAN. In the center is a button that turns off the LED backlight of the router. There is also a cooling grille for all this powerful and high-tech "stuffing".

What do all these innovations give?

First of all, it supports the speed of the new 802.11 ac format. Also, the location of the ports on the back cover improves the ease of use of the router. Now the wires do not stick out in all directions, but are conveniently gathered from behind. In addition to the wide functionality and technical equipment, this device also has aesthetic functions. It should successfully fit into the interior of the room and delight the eyes of the owner of this stylish gadget. Moreover, the manufacturer took care of this. He made the lights of the indicators softer and even added the backlight off button, which we mentioned earlier.

The top three antennas support a popular 3-band technology called 3T3R. Thanks to the efforts of developers, this router at work is heated less than its predecessors. This ensures its reliable and stable operation. A long power cable will help to place the router in any convenient place.

This Asus router is a big jump in terms of router performance. Developers do not hesitate to say that this is the fastest wireless device that is on the market at the moment. The basis of such achievements is the processor on two cores, and also the wireless chip BROADCOM. All this serves the RAM, the volume of which has grown significantly. With such a filling, the claimed wireless connection speed is 1900 Mbps. Such indicators give two ranges of 5G with two standards: ac and n, frequency 2.4 GHz and speeds of 1300 Mbit / s and 600 Mbit / s, respectively. The TurboQAM technology mentioned above allowed to increase the speed of the standard n to 600 Mbit / s. This technology works with all ASUS devices that support it. Reviews about her inspire confidence. These include devices such as Wi-Fi adapters, for example.

Gigabit ports provide reliable operation of all wired devices, which require more and more resources each time. Such characteristics as the performance of NAS, can be increased thanks to a new USB 3.0 port. Together with the updated firmware, this gives a significant increase in the speed of the file server. Ports USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 serve for connecting different flash drives, hard drives, as well as modems 3G / 4G. The firmware of the router has the newest version at the time the device enters the market.

Software

When the ASUS RT-AC68U is connected to the computer for the first time, the browser opens the router settings page. No more need to specifically enter the IP address of the router, which not everyone remembers or knows. Just in case, you can recall: 192.168.1.1/. The first time you connect, you can use the login / password - admin / admin.

Interface

On ASUS RT-AC68U, the router firmware is standard for all Asus routers. More precisely, its interface. The only differences can be only configuration options that depend on the router model. On the left are general and additional settings.

The general configuration of the ASUS router begins with the configuration of the network map. It is a kind of dash board with the parameters of the connected Internet, Wi-Fi security settings, the number of clients connected at the moment, the presence of connections via USB ports. It is also possible to quickly configure a Wi-Fi network, a fast encryption setting, which can be selected from five options. The ASUS RT-AC68U is configured for both 2.4 GHz frequency and 5 GHz frequency.

The next standard setting is "Guest network". It allows you to create multiple guest logs for your friends and family. The more you do not have to change your password every time after the departure of your guests.

Next comes the traffic and monitoring manager. It is needed if you want to configure ports for devices on your network. For example, you want ports for the browser to be more priority than all the others, and the torrent will be lower level. That is, you can simultaneously download the torrent and watch your pages without compromising performance.

Next comes the "Parental Control". With it, you can limit the access of children to certain specific resources. Further - "USB-application", i.e., you can install several proprietary applications from ASUS. In this version of the firmware there are five. For example "Print Server", 3G / 4G and Downloadmaster, which is a torrent. When you install it you will need a connected hard drive or a flash drive. After installing it, you can download files downloaded from the torrent directly to your hard drive using a router.

Next is the management of the cloud service AiCloud. This service is designed to store your data in the cloud. If you connect a hard drive to your router, then this service will allow you to access the information on this drive from anywhere in the world where there is access to the Internet. This is very convenient if you are on a trip away from home.

Additional settings

In the programming interface of the ASUS RT-AC68U, the wireless network is configured first. Here all the general settings are standard enough. There is also a separate point of professional settings that allow you to fine tune the router, set some rules - for example, when Wi-Fi must work and when it should not. But basically the general settings are enough for comfortable work with the device. Here you can select them separately for the ac range and separately for the n range.

After that, the settings of the local network go. Here we configure the router's IP address, the DHCP server. You can configure one port for the IPTV set-top box. You can choose the provider and port that will be used for IPTV. Still there is a Switch Control setting. With it, you can enable hardware acceleration, as well as large frame types.

Next are the Internet settings. Here we can choose the type of Internet connection, login / password, which is required by your ISP. One of the coolest chips of this router is that it has a dual WAN. With this function, you can make a reservation. For example, if there is no Internet on the main cable, you can connect either via a 3G modem or through one of the LAN ports. Another big plus of dual WAN is that now you can connect to Internet from two providers to one router. Also there is port forwarding, DDNS settings.

Then go the IPv6 and VPN server settings . IPv6 is disabled by default. The VPN server settings will help you if you want to connect to your home network via VPN.

Next are the settings for FireWall. There are many of them, so you can always set a fairly high level of security for any user. There is a filter of URl-addresses, which allows you to block any unwanted addresses of sites. You can also block by keywords or network services. For example, you can block IP-telephony or ICQ.

After that, the administration tab is displayed. It allows you to select the operating mode. The default setting is the wireless router. Also there is a repeater mode, access point mode and Media Bridge, when your router connects to another router that distributes the Internet via Wi-Fi. In doing so, you connect your devices to the LAN ports of your router. In the system settings, you can change the administrator password, set the time zone. In the settings management, you can save or restore the specified settings.

Next comes the system log. It displays all the processes that occur. Here you can see the frequency of the processor, DHCP clients, etc. In the "Wireless" tab there is a fairly accurate monitoring of the wireless network: who is connected, the signal power, the speed of reception and transmission, etc. In the other tab, you can see the routing table.

Ends with the "Network Utilities" tab. With their help, you can, for example, "wake up" on the network some device that is in sleep mode.

What else?

I also want to mention the proprietary technology of increasing the coverage area of the wireless network AiRadar. It allows you to select the priority directions by which the Wi-Fi signal will be heard. Another worth mentioning is the Quality of Service feature, which allows you to prioritize the use of bandwidth by various applications for ASUS RT-AC68U. Reviews on the network about these functions cause only positive emotions.

Comparison with competitors

Now I would like to compare this wonderful router, ASUS RT-AC68U, with other devices from its price range. The fact is that he has a competitor on the market. This is a Netgear R7000 router. Here we will make a small comparative overview of the routers from Asus and Netgear.

You can start with the processor. Asus has Dual 800 MHz, and Netgear has Dual 1000 MHz. The difference, in principle, is small. In practice, this may result in a small increase in the performance and power consumption of the Netgear router. And there is. The power supply of the "Asus" is lower than that of "Negira": 19V / 1,75A against 12V / 3,5A. This gives 33.25W against 42 watts. The power of the power supply also affects the transmitter power. The more power supply is more powerful, the more reliable and better the Wi-Fi signal is transmitted, and the transmission range can be higher. All this can be tested in practice. Next, we will conduct several tests on the speed of Internet connection and the range of signal transmission. Also we will connect several hard disks from different manufacturers and check the data transfer rate through the USB-3 port.

For tests we will use a dedicated Internet line with a speed of 100 Mb / s, and speedtest.net for speed measurement. To test the performance of hard drives we will use two hard drives: Segate at 5400 revolutions and WesternDigital at 7200 rpm (black color). Both disks are connected via USB 3.0, and the Disk Speed Test program will be used to test the data transfer speed.

When connecting the Internet directly to the computer, the download speed is 93.6 Mb / s, and the sending of data is 78.86; Ping - 8 ms. Now we connect the cable to each of the routers and test the speed of the Internet via Wi-Fi.

The ASUS Wireless Router displays the following test result for reception / transmission: 15.40 / 74.88 at 2.4 GHz. At a frequency of 5 GHz, the speed slightly increased and amounted to 19.43 / 76.83

Next we will connect hard drives to ASUS. Let's start with WD. When connected to the router, the hard disk is detected, but the connection does not occur. This is due to lack of nutrition. Even with the connection of the second power cable from USB 2.0 this is still not enough. The second hard drive - Segate - connects and works fine.

Now check the speed of the device on the network. The test gives the following results for writing / reading - 9.8 / 16.2 MB / s. This suggests that when working with video content over the network, there can be difficulties.

Next, check the work of Netgear. The USB 3.0 port is located on the front panel here. At a frequency of 2.4 GHz, the speed test indicates reception / sending - 41.29 / 72.51. When connected at a frequency of 5 GHz, the rate for receiving / sending was 92.8 / 78.41

Next, connect to this router hard drives. WD WD when connected via USB 3.0 also refuses to work. This router also lacks the power to run and operate this powerful hard drive. When you connect Segate, everything works fine. The test for the data transfer rate from the hard disk showed the following result: 11.9 MB / s for writing and 16.4 MB / s for reading. For the purity of the experiment, we connect the disks directly to the computer and make a test. Segate showed the following results: record / read - 56.8 / 78.2 MB / s.

Such indicators are quite enough for comfortable and productive work with a hard disk. This test clearly demonstrates that low data rates from a hard drive are not a drawback of the hard drives themselves. With the speed of the connected Internet line and the high speed of Wi-Fi data transmission, the slow operation of the disk is connected with the inadequate operation of the controllers in the routers. Manufacturers must take note of this and bring this piece of software to their senses.

The result

About ASUS RT-AC68U reviews are very diverse. From this review we can draw the following conclusions:

1. The appearance, ergonomics and technical capabilities of ASUS RT-AC68U router are at an altitude.

2. The speed of data transfer over Wi-Fi is quite high.

3. The interface of the firmware of the device is intuitive and understandable. It is possible to carry out both superficial and deep settings.

The router ASUS RT-AC68U has its drawbacks. This is a poor performance of the hard disk controller. The slow data transfer rate from disks over Wi-Fi is connected, most likely, with the software inadequacy.

Also, when choosing a NAS-server, it is necessary to approach the selection of a hard disk quite seriously. The fact is that the powerful Western Digital hard drives are of high speed at 7200 rpm and are designed to work with media content. Given that they need large power resources, they do not have enough power from any USB port. But you can use a hard drive with external power supply. Less "voracious" hard drives will work fine.