[Review] ASUS RT-N56U Wireless-N Dual-Band Router - Bringing Sexy Back

ddhungry

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It depends on your usage. Most marketing ads state 600Mbps which gives the impression of double bandwidth which is not true. The actual scenario is that you can use either bands, but not an aggregation of both. Best way to use both bands is to split them between your wireless devices, but then again, not many wireless devices can operate on 5Ghz.

One thing about 5Ghz is that it has shorter range, although less congested. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks for the reply. I am currently thinking of upgrading the firmware to 1.0.1.7f but I'm not sure if after upgrading will i be able to connect to singtel exStream? I'm currently still using adsl but am waiting for singtel to come in Jan to setup the connection.
 

chong

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potential wols: the broken Traffic Monitor graphs are finally fixed in firmware 1.0.1.8b
 

trenzterra

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How much is the N56 selling for now? BTW, I can use it with an ADSL modem right?
 

uplinkhack

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Anyone knows where I can get the N56U in any shop other than SimLim? Need one to replace current home network..
 

uplinkhack

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actually hor after reading so much, why are we trying to replace the Singtel router with the Asus one? because the WAN to LAN speed is faster? What are the other advantages compared to putting the N56U behind Singtel's router?
 

Robert

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Few questions here:

a) DUAL BAND means the router can communicate at 2 frequencies. Each frequency has a different SSID. So assuming I set 2.4GHz (SSID1) and 5GHz (SSID2), on my home devices I can set (for example) laptops connect to SSID1 while SmartTV connect to SSID2. Correct?

b) The speed difference between 2.4GHz and 5GHz is not measured by the xGHz (ie 2.4GHz faster than 5GHz) correct?

c) What wireless standards should I use to optimise the speed (I have a 100mpbs MaxOnline Ultimate) ie b/g/n for each band? Is the speed dependent on connection to b/g/n? If so, how do I get the device to connect at the highest possible speed?

d) Encryption I should set to WPA2-AES? Does encryption type have an impact on performance?

Sorry for the noob questions.
 

Dr_ARCHer

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Few questions here:

a) DUAL BAND means the router can communicate at 2 frequencies. Each frequency has a different SSID. So assuming I set 2.4GHz (SSID1) and 5GHz (SSID2), on my home devices I can set (for example) laptops connect to SSID1 while SmartTV connect to SSID2. Correct?

b) The speed difference between 2.4GHz and 5GHz is not measured by the xGHz (ie 2.4GHz faster than 5GHz) correct?

c) What wireless standards should I use to optimise the speed (I have a 100mpbs MaxOnline Ultimate) ie b/g/n for each band? Is the speed dependent on connection to b/g/n? If so, how do I get the device to connect at the highest possible speed?

d) Encryption I should set to WPA2-AES? Does encryption type have an impact on performance?

Sorry for the noob questions.

a) Correct. Dual-band measure two sets of frequencies. I have set a different SSID to each set of frequencies.

b) Yes. The 2.4/5.0 refers to the frequency band, not the transfer speed.

c) Typically, you want want to set a 11n only AP, and a 11g only AP. From what I read, if you have legacy (i.e. 11g) devices on the same AP and your AP is set to 11g/n, then there is some penalty on the other 11n devices.

d) Not any more. In the early days, turning on WEP slows down the 11b speeds, but that no long happens (unless we have a very poor implementation).
 

Robert

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a) Correct. Dual-band measure two sets of frequencies. I have set a different SSID to each set of frequencies.

b) Yes. The 2.4/5.0 refers to the frequency band, not the transfer speed.

c) Typically, you want want to set a 11n only AP, and a 11g only AP. From what I read, if you have legacy (i.e. 11g) devices on the same AP and your AP is set to 11g/n, then there is some penalty on the other 11n devices.

d) Not any more. In the early days, turning on WEP slows down the 11b speeds, but that no long happens (unless we have a very poor implementation).
In response to

a) Logically speaking, even though I set dual bands (2.4GHz and 5GHz), we're talking about both bands still go thought 1 WAN port. So where is the advantage? By implementing dual bands, we're sort of doing "load balancing" right?

c) So which standard should I set? Leave it as "n", or AUTO or [your suggestion]? If I leave it at "n" will legacy devices have problems connecting, or will the "n" devices see a performance impact? Or should I set SSID1 as "n" and SSID2 as "g". Then devices like in DLINK IP cam, Smart TV etc how do I know if they have "n" implementation? MacBook Pro etc? Can I then say, that in terms of speed, "n" is faster than "g", is faster than "b"?

Out of curiosity, what do you or anyone reading this post, understand from this statement from the Samsung SmartTV manual (esp the last para, so WPA2 AES is OK??):

"This TV supports the IEEE 802.11a/b/g and n communication protocols. Samsung recommends using IEEE 802.11n. When you play the video over a IEEE 802.11b/g connection, the video may not play smoothly.

Most wireless network systems incorporate a security system that requires devices that access the network through an access point or wireless router (typically a wireless IP Sharer) to transmit an encrypted security code called an access key.

If Pure High-throughput (Greenfield) 802.11n mode is selected and the Encryption type is set to WEP, TKIP or TKIP AES (WPS2Mixed) for your wireless router, Samsung TVs will not support a connection in compliance with new Wi-Fi certification specifications."
 
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elpibe10

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d) Not any more. In the early days, turning on WEP slows down the 11b speeds, but that no long happens (unless we have a very poor implementation).

"Most 802.11n products will knock your throughput down by up to 80% if you use WEP or WPA/TKIP security"

"The bottom line is that you can only use WPA2/AES wireless security (or no security at all) if you don't want to throw away lots of speed."

Source : 5 Ways To Fix Slow 802.11n Speed - SmallNetBuilder
 

uplinkhack

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Finally gotten mine. Setup Fibre, miotv and miovoice in 15min. Not bad. The default settings are great. Only need to change SSID and password that's all.
 

uplinkhack

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actually hor after reading so much, why are we trying to replace the Singtel router with the Asus one? because the WAN to LAN speed is faster? What are the other advantages compared to putting the N56U behind Singtel's router?
Anyone????
 

benjaminyeo

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Is there anyone using their router as pptp server? Just wondering how high can the throughput be and see if it can hit 50mbps up/down.
 

uplinkhack

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Commercial Router Features > Singtel Router Features
Performance should be better + QoS
QoS is the home page where we can set the priority of the client?

what other special features that are relatively unknown ah? i only use it as a normal router leh..
 

ArcticCheetah

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QoS can prioritize by traffic type.
Eg You watch youtube of course you want the packets to reach your computer so your video will not buffer lag so you set it high priority.
Also if someone torrent a lot it will lag other users' web surfing so you set torrent to low.
If you got more advance router you can do ftp server, ipv6 in ipv4 tunneling (Singapore ISP no ipv6 so you tunnel through to get ipv6).
Windows Share Server, DLNA Server, VPN etc.
 

Robert

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Finally got myself a RT-N56U today. Copied all my WRT-54G settings and ready to go.

Managed to get the LAN setup OK. Great with speedtest etc.

Need advice on the wireless portion. My old WRT-54G was using the older WEP standard.

1) I am setting two bands of 2.4GHz (b/g) and 5GHz (n). Both using WPA2-Personal (AES). The two SSIDs are not hidden, and are named as (example) SSID and SSID_5G.

2) My devices like laptops, iphone4 cannot "see" the 5GHz band. I manually created the SSID_5G, entered the key and encryption type etc - still cannot connect.

Did I do something wrong?

Let me get this fixed, first before I attempt to re-connect my Dlink-5220 IP camera with port forwarding (copied the setting already).

Sorry to bother the gurus here.
 

elpibe10

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2) My devices like laptops, iphone4 cannot "see" the 5GHz band. I manually created the SSID_5G, entered the key and encryption type etc - still cannot connect.

Did I do something wrong?

Some older laptops and most portable devices (including iPhone 4/4S) don't have built-in support for the 5GHz band
 

ArcticCheetah

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iphone has dual band? Single Band devices cannot detect 5Ghz frequencies. It is for 802.11a and 802.11n Dual Band Devices.
Anyway 5Ghz suck at range you can't beat physics of nature.
 
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