I just installed an RT-N65U for a customer, it's melting the snow off of his roof.

They had a Cisco/Linksys E2500 that had trouble getting a signal to an upstairs back bedroom, one bar and a 1.5 download speed. With the ASUS they have full bars and full 15M speed using the 2.4Ghz radio, 2.4Ghz goes through walls better than 5Ghz. One only needs 5Ghz for optimum computer to computer file transfer anyway. They only had 3 bars using the ASUS 5Ghz and 7M download.

Last week I installed an RT-N66U Dark Knight in an old 3 story house that has brick walls. It's a bit stronger is why I went with it, but it does have external antennas. They had an Airport base station that couldn't reach the 3rd floor at the far end of the house, and it couldn't get through to a far room in the basement. The house has full coverage now. The basement and 3rd floor gets 2-3 bars and 5M download out of 20M possible, but it has coverage.

I guess you get what you pay for.

No unusual setup or configuration issues? Are you going to make me Google for the prices?

N65U $90 and N66U $130 at Amazon.

When you first connect it goes to a setup routine, but after that it's just another web based router interface but with many more options than the average bear. VPN server, AP or router, Traffic managing/shaping, Traffic monitor, USB ports for Network disk or Print Server, with attached USB disk it can be an FTP server, local Samba server, or Media Server.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/RT-N65U/E7376_RT-N65U_Manual.pdf

Plus it's a powerful mofo.

If/when my current dLink dies, I might have to look at the $90 one. Could always use a better signal around the house.

I may be getting that ASUS router sooner than later. My router completely "lost" its internet connection last evening. I couldn't even log into it from my computer (connected via ethernet). Had to hard reboot it by disconnecting and reconnecting the power.

You won't be disappointed in the performance. The two I put in recently where I thought we were going to need repeaters are working out great, no complaints.

Like I mentioned you may need to use the 2.4 Ghz connection if you need better wall penetration. The 5 Ghz is better for interference though. You just can't have it all.

If I remember they actually have a 2 year warranty as opposed to 1 year like most.

We're still only capable of 802.11g around here with the Minis. My father-in-law's MacBook Pro is n capable, though.

Oh, I found the most stable 2.4 channels to use quite some time ago and locked those in.

Finger is on the trigger. My router lost its internet connection again today. Same method had to be employed to restore it. I've had this one for 4 or 5 years, so it is probably time to go.

Found a good price at NewEgg with free shipping.

The only thing I've found odd about the interface is that when reserving IPs it doesn't show the name of the machine after reserving, or even give a place to put a name.



Although if you click on the arrow it does give some names you can reference by MAC address.



Unlike many router manufacturers Asus is very open to third party firmware, like DD-WRT and Tomato. For home use it really doesn't matter, but I think I'm going to get one and flash it to see what it does.

Looks like the DD-WRT firmware gives the machine name and a way to name it. Here's a link to the emulator for DD-WRT. The options available with DD-WRT are comparable to commercial routers. From the wireless options alone you can see that DD-WRT gives many more options to tweak.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/demo/Services.asp

Here's the Asus emulator.

http://event.asus.com/2012/nw/dummy_ui/en/

One of the first things I do is change the router's default IP address to something non-standard.