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Using ASUS RT-N66U as wired router

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venture996

Occasional Visitor
I retired my RT-N66U from wireless access role and have been using it for a few years as my wired router (Comcast Gateway feeding its 250mb internet connection). It works fine, but I'm aware that this is still old technology.

We have a total of 3 access points supporting 2 wired desktops, and a half dozen latops/phones, plus a bunch of miscellaneous devices. Am I losing something by performance or security wise by using a five year old device in this role (have a switch plugged into the router to support a total of 8 wired devices)?
 
If you're using it just as a router it should be fine. But if you use anything that disables hardware acceleration your throughput will be limited to ~150Mbps. And if you use any of the "non-router" functions like VPN, USB sharing, media server, etc. then they will all perform poorly compared to more modern routers because they are held back by the N66U's slow CPU.

It's not clear from what you said whether the N66U is your "edge" security device (i.e. firewall), or whether the Comcast does that. If the N66U is your edge device then, of course, you need to keep it updated with the latest security patches.
 
Great questions. This is my edge security device (firewall); I am not using any non-router functions (not even using wifi on the ASUS).

I don't understand what would disable hardware acceleration on it, can you please clarify?
 
You don't say whether you are using Asus' stock firmware or a third party like Merlin's. I'm using Merlin's which has some features/information that are not in the stock firmware.

If you enable IPTraffic (traffic monitoring statistics - Merlin only) or Traditional QOS they will disable hardware acceleration. There are probably other things that do so (perhaps VPN?).

Either way, in Merlin's firmware it will tell you the state of hardware acceleration on the Tools > System Information page. The other way you can tell is by doing a speed test ;). If you get your 250Mbps H/W accel. is on, if you get ~150Mbps it's off.
 
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I use the stock firmware, but we do get the promised results via speedtest, so it must be on. Thanks very much for your insight.
 
Despite its age, so far Asus hasn't announced any plan on stopping to provide firmware updates. So while you might not get many new features, I would expect security updates to still be available for quite a while. In that case, as long your needs don't change, sticking to the RT-N66U as your primary gateway will be fine.
 
Despite its age, so far Asus hasn't announced any plan on stopping to provide firmware updates. So while you might not get many new features, I would expect security updates to still be available for quite a while. In that case, as long your needs don't change, sticking to the RT-N66U as your primary gateway will be fine.

I would agree - turn off the wifi, and it'll likely be fine for quite some time here...
 

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