ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router Review

By Ken Brown October 4, 2012

ASUS RT-N66U Setup

ASUS ships the RT-N66U router with a Power Adapter, detachable stand, RJ-45 Ethernet cable, Quick Start Guide, Support CD (that includes the User Manual and ASUS Utility Software). This is a common suite of accessories that we find perfectly adequate. What is interesting to note is that the stand that comes with the ASUS RT-N66U is very much optional to give your router a different kind of profile. Besides being slightly higher, the internal antennas are at a different angle that might provide you with better transmitting coverage.

The “Black Diamond” design of the ASUS RT-N66U router doesn’t have that many buttons on its body but does give you a ton of information via the LED indicator lights on the front. From left to right, you have indicators that show you: Power, LAN, WAN, 2.4GHz, 5.0GHz, USB.

Along the back, you will find the Power (DC-In) port, Power switch, 2 USB ports, Reset Button, Internet & LAN ports and WPS Security button.

To set the N66U up, all you really need to do is plug a computer or laptop directly into a powered RT-N66U and open up a browser. Once you open up a browser, you will be prompted to log in. As you can see in the picture below, the configuration of the ASUS router is guided by text and visual aides.

After the RT-N66U checks for an internet connection, it prompts you to change your password from the default settings.

A very nice feature that ASUS has built in is the ability to set up your router as either an Access Point or a Router. AP Mode is for when you want to extend your network and connect devices to the RT-66U directly.

ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Router Setup

After choosing the type of networking we wanted (Router), we then choose the WAN connection type:

At this point, we can now choose the names of our wireless network and what kind of security we planned on having. Notice that we can select SSIDs for for both wireless channels independently. Very cool.

Before we get too far, we wanted to check and see if we were running the latest firmware from ASUS. The RT-N66U has a tab where you can check for the latest firwmware and automatically upgrade. The tab also shows the current version if you wanted to upgrade manually.

To upgrade the firmware manually, we visited the ASUS website and checked to see if there was a later firmware to be found. Version 3.0.0.4.220 was available so we just downloaded it to our desktop and relaunched the router’s GUI.

The firmware upgrade process is very simple and here you can see that after only a few clicks we were ready to go.

One more feature that we found on the ASUS router is the ability to create and configure Guest Networks. This feature is found in other routers so it’s not exclusive, but the fact that this feature is there tells us that the ASUS engineers really want this router to be as versatile as possible.

ASUS has also included parental controls for better piece of mind while your minor is surfing the net. This is another optional feature that takes some configuration. If you don’t want it, no harm done. If you were looking for this feature – or even willing to spend extra money on third-party software, then this feature will be attractive.

The router’s two USB ports can be used to connect your external hard drive or even a printer so that you devices can access network storage and print wirelessly. The AiDisk option shown below connects your USB HDD to build an FTP server to work with DDNS.

Now that we have the RT-N66U router setup and configured, lets do
some speed tests to see if we can judge just how well it does in the
real world.

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