ASUS RT-N16 – Wireless router + 4-port switch – Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (draft) – external

10 Review to this product

• 

  S. Mailaender
  October 14th, 2010 on 5:18 pm

  Rating

  This is a great high quality product.
  
  DD-WRT supports this router so if you’re not satisfied with the Asus firmware, you’ll have the option to get the best of it with a simple flash.
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  Marling Querales
  October 15th, 2010 on 11:09 am

  Rating

  I am very happy, I have buy asus yrt n16 wireless router and actually enjoy it
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  Debra L Linville
  October 15th, 2010 on 1:31 pm

  Rating

  purchased 2 of these and set them up with tomato firmware and wds, some slight problems with inital static ip’s that i had set on pc’s but got past it and all seems fine now
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  jerry6
  October 16th, 2010 on 8:30 pm

  Rating

  and that includes wrt 600-610n , wndr3700 , which i still use as an AP for 5ghz band . This is the only con so far , it has the 5 ghz chip but not implemented . Other than that , powerful , great options in admin gui , replaceable antennas 2 usb ports . It was also less $$$ than other routers I have . Will accept dd wrt if you want to get even more out of this router .
  
  So far has been problem free . Great buy !
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  William W. Myers
  October 17th, 2010 on 2:54 pm

  Rating

  Purchased because of the good reviews not just on the Amazon site. Was also looking for a N class router that would provide 1 gig ethernet ports and USB support. This router had it all, plus able to run 3rd party firmware if wanted or needed for some feature.
  
  So far I have been very happy with my purchase. The supplied firmware is good with lots of features and easy to setup. I did install the Tomato firmware (do a google search and you will find it) for some additional features. Primarly more granular QOS. I had used the router for several days with the supplied firmware and that worked fine, but wanted the additional feature support of Tomato.
  
  My wireless range is good both G and N. Router is fast and will support bit torrent without breaking a sweat.
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  Benjamin Smith
  October 18th, 2010 on 12:07 pm

  Rating

  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.
• 

  Steven J. Marsh
  October 18th, 2010 on 6:56 pm

  Rating

  If you are looking for a high-end home router for a reasonable price you have found it.

  What makes this router so special? First, lets talk about the hardware. This baby has Gigabit Ethernet on both the WAN and the LAN side, two features that I required for this purchase. It also has draft-N spec wireless, the combination of these two enhancements makes everything faster! Yes, you will notice a speed boost even on G-spec’d wireless clients.

  The next hardware enhancement is the high-end ARM CPU in this unit, it runs at a blistering 480 MHZ! Thats at least twice as fast as most G-spec’d wireless routers, then theres the 128 MB RAM that allows this unit to use bigger buffers and implement more sophisticated firmware features.

  Lastly, this unit includes a USB-host with mass storage connectivity, a feature that allows you to add NAS or UPnP capabilities to your network.

  So as far as hardware goes this unit is in the top five, for sure.

  Next, lets talk firmware, the ASUS RT-N16 stock firmware includes all the usual wireless features you’d expect like DHCP, NAP, WEP, TKIP, etc, etc. But this unit adds the NAS and the UPnP features I mentioned earlier. With NAS you can share a hard drive with the family and UPnP you can use a hard drive to store and play back streaming video on UPnP enabled devices like Windows or the Sony PS3.

  I almost always buy routers that are DD-WRT firmware compatible because rarely does the vendors’ stock firmware deliver, I bought this unit because it is DD-WRT compatible as well.

  Well in the case of this unit, the Asus RT-16 firmware is the exception, it does deliver. It has high-end features not normally included in a home router, of particular importance to me, is configurable wireless-switch modes, that allows you to use this unit as more than a wireless WAN gateway. This allows the RT-N16 to act as a wireless switch connected to an existing wired network, or to expand an existing wireless network.

  No, it does not have the feature-granularity that DD-WRT has, but, what it does have should satisfy the vast majority of home applications.

  I’m sure there’s more stuff that I’m forgetting to mention, but make no mistake this unit is an excellent value that will be competitive for years to come.
• 

  TwOy
  October 19th, 2010 on 1:10 am

  Rating

  Make no mistake. The original firmware is buggy. I had all sorts of the problems with the router from slowdowns to complete freezes until I have replaced the original firmware with Tomato.

  Since then it has been working perfectly 24/7 even under heavy load.
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  P. Woods
  October 21st, 2010 on 6:58 am

  Rating

  This router, as it stands with stock firmware, is not bad. The fact that Asus openly supports people installing 3rd party firmware on it makes it pretty incredible. The hardware is heads and shoulders above what you get elsewhere in this price range, and even if you do keep it stock there seem to be regular updates to the firmware that are much better than its initial release (I still had problems with QOS killing overall performance – and disabled it before installing tomato).

  Where the router shines is when you install dd-wrt or tomato on it, which in addition to stability and performance also provides many more options. The Optware package lets you install quite a few common open source languages and servers, i.e. MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd, Cherokee, PHP, Python, Ruby, various media servers, etc.

  Using one of the two USB 2.0 ports I have an external drive shared using Samba, and various computers on the local network doing automated backups to that location. If I had the need, I would buy another just to use as a small low-powered server even if I did not use the networking capabilities. I can’t really say enough, and have to cut myself off here before I just start rambling in superlatives.
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  S. Sen
  October 21st, 2010 on 12:29 pm

  Rating

  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.