Thoughts on Asus RT-N66U

I have been using a Draytek 2750n on my FTTC connection for 18 months and have found it to be very good, especially as for what ever reason my OR modem would not operate over 50% of the line speed that the Draytek would.

Over the possibilty of vectoring coming later this year I contacted draytek to see if the 2750n was vectoring friendly at least and the answer I got back that not only was it not vectoring friendly but the modem was only rated to 100 mb/s.

So not looking good if vectoring is rolled out for the whole cabinet.

So I am now looking at the ASUS RT-N66U to be used in conjunction with an OR modem (and if mine is stil not happy I'll get one off ebay)

What are people's thoughts on it as a FTTC router?

Edited by undecidedadrian (Wed 24-Apr-13 13:26:41)

Modem? Typo? [Edit] Ah,you've edited your post now

While the Asus router is the bees knees by all accounts, why change now?

Vectoring trials are only just starting and the timescale for full rollout isn't known (or indeed if it will be rolled out)

When/if it is rolled out the 66 will no doubt have been superseded...

Edited by ferretuk (Wed 24-Apr-13 13:59:18)

In reply to a post by undecidedadrian:

What are people's thoughts on it as a FTTC modem?

My thoughts are 'what's wrong with the BT supplied modem?'

The Asus RT-N66U is not a VDSL modem, and the Openreach modems have 100Mb LAN ports only, so regardless you aren't going to be going over 100Mb.

It's likely that there will be recommendations issued for vectoring capable hardware, hardware tested and known to work with the Openreach network, best wait until those are released.

And one of the issues that I know BT are planning to lok at during the trial is, the effect of "non-standard" modems on performance.

I really like the Asus RT-N66U, It seems to be able to cope very well with the throughput (I get 80mb/20mb) whilst streaming from NAS etc..

It has a GREAT wireless signal, one of the strongest I've seen.

And if you load up Merlin's firmware it gets even better (Merlin: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/forumdisplay.php?f=42)

Steve

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by undecidedadrian:

What are people's thoughts on it as a FTTC modem?

My thoughts are 'what's wrong with the BT supplied modem?'

Definitely. Especially as the Metanoia MT3301/2301 chipset [1] in the Draytek seems generally inferior to the Broadcom BCM6368 that drives the Openreach device.

[1] http://www.metanoia.com.tw/product_d.php?id=5

Thanks for that nice to know that it can handle full speeds.

To the others, my OR modem is a type 2A and I had my infinity installed when the whole hoo ha with the overheating modems was happening and I asked the engineer about it and he assured me that the modem would be ok.

I tried again on my PC when we went to 17a profile and it still doesn't seem to give as good as a performance as the draytek. I try downloading large games off steam and driver files off AMD and I don't see the amount I do on the draytek,

I think my draytek was a broadcom based chipset as it is one of the earlier ones and due to the latest firmware I know the FTTC cabinet is broadcom based so I wonder if the better performance was due to that. As I know with the draytek mis-matching chipsets don't work very well at all.

I was going to try again next week as I have now had to buy a UPS due to frequent power cuts and the broadband performance has significantly improved and I shall see if the OR modem works any better of a UPS.

I am looking at the ASUS now as it has dual wi-fi modes and in the last 2 years I have now got phones/tables etc that all would benefit from operating in the 5Ghz but my wife's laptop is 2.4 Ghz only,

Also the draytek on the Gigabit network seems to be capping out at 200 mb/sec and I was wondering if the asus would give higher performance on my internal network as well.

In reply to a post by boxst:

I really like the Asus RT-N66U, It seems to be able to cope very well with the throughput (I get 80mb/20mb) whilst streaming from NAS etc..

It has a GREAT wireless signal, one of the strongest I've seen.

And if you load up Merlin's firmware it gets even better (Merlin: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/forumdisplay.php?f=42)

Steve

Agree 110% and soooo configurable. I have not even began to scratch the surface of its capabilities. Another big plus is that Asus is constantly developing the firmware, which benefits Merlin's firmware which I have always used.

In reply to a post by undecidedadrian:

Also the draytek on the Gigabit network seems to be capping out at 200 mb/sec and I was wondering if the asus would give higher performance on my internal network as well.

I reckon the RT-N66U is a very nice bit of kit. I replaced my 4 year old Draytek 2820Vn with one two weeks ago, plugged in my Openreach modem. I've not done a LAN perf test though it, but I've had no problems with my 45megabit data rate.

5GHz coverage is much better than other WiFi access points I've used, probably due to the three physical antennas.