Generation N: Five 802.11n routers tested

5 products related to this article

ASUS WL-500W

The ASUS WL-500W is housed in a stylish white case and has three rather large antennas, which, regrettably, cannot be changed. Just like the rest of the routers in this test, the ASUS has four LAN-connections offering speeds of up to 100Mbit/s. The WLAN-security of this router is right up to date with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2. The router also supports Wireless Multimedia, also known as 802.11e. This technology ensures that multimedia streams will gain a higher priority on a wireless connection.

Sadly enough the ASUS WL-500W lacks some of the more common functions. For example, the Firewall is not of the SPI type (statefull Packet Inspection), which means that the contents of data packets are not inspected by the Firewall. The ASUS also lacks QoS (Quality of Service). On the other hand ASUS have implemented something unique into their router: on the back we find two USB-ports, to which you can connect either an external hard disk or webcam. In this way you can easily transform you router into a file- and webcam server! The fileserver offers the possibility to make the files on your hard disk accessible through FTP for example. You can also make a complete rights structure. Also unique is the integrated BitTorrent server and client: when connecting a harddisk to the router you can download files through BitTorrent even when your pc is turned off. This is an extremely handy function to have, especially when you take into account that the power usage of a router is nothing when compared to that of the average pc if you were to leave it on day and night for your downloads. One gripe that we have with the ASUS is that the routers web menu isn't exactly user friendly.

During our tests it became clear that the ASUS router was suffering from some teething problems. When we set the bandwidth of the wireless connection to 40 MHz the router was not recognized by any wireless adapter, not even its own. Setting the bandwidth back to 20 MHz solved the problem and we were able to initiate a stable and problemfree connection. Testing the connection at 10 meters we measured speeds varying between 43 to 62 Mbit/s, about two to three times as fast as the current 802.11g standard. At 20 meters we measured speeds of 37.8Mbit/s and 38.6Mbits respectively from and to the WLAN-client. There are sets that offer higher speeds but nonetheless the connection was definitely faster than anything 802.11g is capable of.

At the time of writing this article the ASUS WL-500W has an average retail price of around $155/£105, which makes it, along with Belkin, the most expensive of the five routers. The high price can be justified though: not only the routers ability to work as a fie-, webcam- and BitTorrent-server, but also because ASUS is the only manufacturer to offer a guarantee for 802.11n compatibility.