Asus RT-N56U Reviewed

[Shikami]

Unfortunately for me, firmware 1.0.1.4 still does not allow VPN to work via wired connection when Hardware NAT (HWNAT) is enabled. Wired VPN works when disabled (either with QoS or Multi-cast turned-on), but this was true with 1.0.1.3 as well.

I am getting very close to testing this myself and see what could be the issue. As I see it, it is very possible the HW NAT capability is the issue. The Engenious router suffered from the same problem with the exact symptoms. And to note it has the same HW NAT engine from a latter SOC from RALink.

Curious, have you tried the beta 3G version of the firmware?

 

[Shikami]

A new version of the firmware has been posted on Asus' FTP site. Version 1.0.1.5. There is no change log, and no linking to this version of the firmware on Asus' support site.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/wireless/RT-N56U/

Well guess what....there is an option to allow VPN passthrough, but guess what it does? It disables the hardware NAT acceleration. One of the best features only to be disabled because it cannot be used in conjunction. What irritates me more about this is the fact that there is no mention that this grand feature is disabled when particular functions are enabled.

Edit: Two of the VPN option will cause the hardware NAT acceleration to be disabled. L2TP, and IPSEC passthrough will cause HW NAT to be disabled.

Another edit: Yours truly has made a negative review on Newegg for I rather that the consumer be informed about this, and perhaps expedite Asus' resolve, if any can be done.

 

[daggerNC]

Was dealing with Time Warner Cable last night - looks like they have oversubscribed the HFC plant on my fiber node again (took forever to get to a Tier3 Tech support person in the USA, and it took him less than 5 minutes to see my node was hitting over 90% utilization!). Anyways, my ping times have more than doubled, but after some "tweaking" by the TWC rep and a direct connection of my PC to the cable modem my ping times improved by 12 ms. Plugged my new N56U back in, powered cycled everything, and then my ping tests showed I was 10ms higher?!? Tried a few settings, no improvement, so I pulled out my old DLink DL-655 gig wireless router, and then NO ping penalty?

Has anybody else noticed this? Reading thru this thread I was wondering if disabling the H/W NAT function could add some processing delay (I do have multicasting enabled), and possibly EasyQoS enabled (can't remember where I left that option last night)? I don't have any special features enabled right now like static IPs or port forwarding - a fairly simply network config.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
daggerNC

 

[daggerNC]

Update: Spent a couple of hours last night further exploring this additional delay hit. Trialed three gig-wireless routers: the Asus N56U, Dlink DIR-655 and Netgear WNR-854T.

Hard Reset on all routers and cold reboots of Arris cable modem (TWC 7M/386K service). With a direct connect of my PC to the CM, my ping test results are 16ms. With the new Asus N56U (EasyQoS off and Multicast off and verified h/w NAT enabled, as well as turning Multicast on as another test case) my average ping test results were 26ms! Repeated new setup with the DLink DIR-655 router and got the same 25-26ms ping test results. Both routers show 1ms of jitter.

I then pulled out my older Neatgear 854T w- router and with similar config settings tried that one, and then I get 16ms ping results and 0ms jitter!?! All units configured with built-in firewall enabled with SPI enabled. I know there are dozens of different config options with all these routers, but I attempted to keep them all as close as possible.

So, with these results, I'm at a loss to understand where the extra 10ms delay is originating from in this new Asus router (and DLink)?? It was too late to start everything over and play with the Firewall and SPI options, but still, the Netgear router had those options enabled and still had no packet delay overhead.... Thoughts anyone?

 

[Anonymous Coward]

A new version of the firmware has been posted on Asus' FTP site. Version 1.0.1.5......

Well guess what....there is an option to allow VPN passthrough, but guess what it does? It disables the hardware NAT acceleration. One of the best features only to be disabled because it cannot be used in conjunction. What irritates me more about this is the fact that there...

Yeah its becoming quite clear that the HW NAT feature is useless. And it can't be fixed since the HW NAT is, well, built into the hardware and you can't fix that in firmware if there is some inherent incompatibility built-in to the way HW NAT is handled at the chip level.

But in all fairness, how noticeable and what impact does disabling of HW NAT really have for most people? And do most other routers have this same issue or not even have HW NAT to begin with? And I guess since wireless VPN connections work even with HW NAT enabled, that HW NAT is for wired connections only?

 

[cipher]

Low 5ghz Signal

I recently picked up this router, plugged it in to my gigabit switch, upgraded the firmware to version 1.0.1.4 and then configured it in Router(Disable NAT) mode for my network (I'm using my old Linksys WRT54GL as the link to my cable modem until I'm more comfortable with the stability of this Asus)

The N56U is sitting on my desk in my second floor office and, using Vistumbler, I tested the signal strength for both 2.4ghz and 5ghz at 99% from this room. However, once I go down to the first floor and the other side of my house, the 5ghz signal drops down to 30-35%. This seems to be an issue because:

1) The 2.4 GHZ signal from the Asus is between 60-80% from the same first floor room.
2) The 2.4 GHZ signal on my aother router (Linksys) is over 60% from the same first floor room.

Also, as a test, I changed the Transmission power (Tx Power adjustment) of the 5Ghz signal and even when I dropped it down to 0 from 100, the signal strength was still being reported at around 30% from the same first floor room!

I have no idea if I'm missing something obvious here or if I've bought one with a bad 5ghz antenna. If it helps, the laptop I'm running the signal test from has an Intel 4965AGN wireless card.

Any ideas?

 

[thiggins]

Any N router / AP is going to have shorter range in the 5GHz band vs. 2.4. 5 GHz signals are reduced more when passing through walls, ceilings, etc.

 

[Shikami]

DaggerNC, I unfortunately cannot say as to why you are having a latency issue. I have had many routers that I have used and I have never seen any increase my latency. I either stayed the same or decreased in latency.

Anonymous, as for the hardware NAT acceleration, using a simple bandwidth test I found egress speed to be 3Mb/s slower. Other Engenius users have noted when their HW NAT was disabled it did decrease their performance too with similar results. This is a lot in my book. 5KB/s I would not think much of it, but 300KB/s and I am irritated.

One thing to note. I think this is one of the greatest features due to the fact that that re-writing of the header will not be done in software by an RISC integer core that is not truly architecturally meant for networking execution and when multiple users are causing packets to traverse over the gateway this feature can have an added benefit. I am curious as to the true impact myself.

As for the Wi-Fi working with VPN, I do not know; I never tested it. As for HW NAT working with only wired I am unsure, and I would speculate it would be for both actually. There is no reason that the HW NAT should be disabled when certain features are enabled. What is the difference between it being done it software to hardware? The only difference is if it is in hardware it will always be faster. However, there seems to be something that was overlooked with the feature, driver, or hardware. I just want it to work as advertised when I enable features of the router.

Cipher try disabling AiRadar (5GHz only) and see if this improves your situation any.

 

[Shikami]

Manufacturer Response:
Dear Valued Customer,

Depending on the VPN type you're using and the speed limitation option set, you might not be able to accelerate the throughput with HW NAT. This is why we've implemented the option to disable HW NAT and thus allow VPN functionality. We are working on a better solution for this which will allow the best possible WAN to LAN performance while still allowing VPN functionality. We will post a reply here notifying users once this solution is in place.

Best Regards,

Looky here, Asus support team made a reply to my Newegg criticisms. Working on it, hmn?

Edit: There is now commentary for the firmware and VPN issue! If they work this out and make this router worth something then I will be impressed. However, I should have been impressed when I purchased the router not post purchase. I wish they would hire me or someone to fix the English.


5. Add VPN pass-through configuration option*

*Depend on VPN type, if there is speed limitation you might not be able to accelerate the though-put by HW NAT or result by VPN fail. Therefore ASUS provide you as option to enable or disable if your condition apply. And yet we still working on better solution to address best performance WAN to LAN and still have VPN enable

 

[im_electronic]

Hi all, found a fix for the crashing routers, esp. when having crashes on USB un/plug, torrentin up, etc.

ON PC
set static IP of 192.168.1.23 (or whatev)
use asus's flash recovery for the router (in teh tools/utilities folder that's installed)
I rolled back to 1.0.1.4, found it more stable for my needs, for now.

ON ROUTER:
replug it in while holding in the reset button until it slowly flashes blue

ON PC:
hit run/flash

and wait till done

and your all set.

I let asus know via there newegg email.

 

[Plasma]

Hi all,
I'm experiencing some problems with the connect rate of my WLAN n client in the 5 GHZ band.
Unfortunately the client doesn't show the connect rate, but I noticed that the throughput wasn't very high, maybe also due to some reconnects. So I updated the firmware from 1009 to 1015 to at least see the connect speed: it's just 54mbit and sometimes going down to 40mbit...

I tried some of the settings described here on SNB in some Articles, but nothing really helped.
The connection is established with 40MHz - surprisingly to myself when obliging the router to connect with 20MHz the connect speed goes down to 19mbit or less.
The 2,4GHz band is used for older WLAN g devices, so I have to stick to "n".

I fear that the reason for the low connect speeds are the 2 thick walls between the router and the client + there is also a DECT phone station and an electric cabinet near to the router.
Interestingly all these factors seem not to affect the 2,4GHz band at all - perfect connects at high throughputs.

Do you have any idea or hint for me, what I shall try, maybe also in the config of the router?

Thanks in advance,
Plasma

 

[thiggins]

5 GHz signals are reduced more than 2.4 GHz signals by walls and other physical barriers. The DECT phone will not affect the router because it operates in a different band.

Any metal barriers between the router and client will also reduce your signal.

The only real solution is to move the router.

 

[Plasma]

Thanks for the swift feedback - I feared I would get this answer...

As all devices connected to the switch part of the router are in that room, I'm not sure if I really will be able to move it.

Before drilling holes through my walls for the cables I'll try different positions of the router (laying, instead of standing, maybe on a higher shelf, or whatever) - maybe this already leads to something above 100mbit...(?)

Thanks for you support,
Plasma

 

[thiggins]

As all devices connected to the switch part of the router are in that room, I'm not sure if I really will be able to move it.

If you run the cable, you could just buy a small switch for that room and link it to the router.

Before drilling holes through my walls for the cables I'll try different positions of the router (laying, instead of standing, maybe on a higher shelf, or whatever) - maybe this already leads to something above 100mbit...(?)

Yes, you should try this. But in my experience, it is rare to see best case real throughput above 80 Mbps. It will be much lower under the conditions you describe.

 

[Plasma]

Thanks again - I didn't start to measure the real throughput yet, so at the moment I'd be happy to get slightly higher connect rates (but I agree that this is not necessarily rising the throughput).

Btw, as I was talking about my firmware upgrade before:
after upgrading to the new firmware 1015 I started experiencing WAN connection freezes and crashes of the router.
Before (with FW 1009) it was extremely stable.

Has anybody the same kind of issues?

Plasma

 

[klas]

No connection freezes issues, everything runs rock solid with latest firmware.

Question though... Where can I find VPN Passthrough option in this firmware?

 

[im_electronic]

Thanks again - I didn't start to measure the real throughput yet, so at the moment I'd be happy to get slightly higher connect rates (but I agree that this is not necessarily rising the throughput).

Btw, as I was talking about my firmware upgrade before:
after upgrading to the new firmware 1015 I started experiencing WAN connection freezes and crashes of the router.
Before (with FW 1009) it was extremely stable.

Has anybody the same kind of issues?

Plasma

I was, see my last post about flashing in recovery mode, seems to be a overwrite of nvram/mtd/yadda yadda that needs to happen.

 

[daggerNC]

Update #2: I tried yet a fourth wireless gig router, the (very nice) Engenius Gaming Gig router, model # ESR9885G. And.....similar results - my ping time jumps by 9 ms with this router, from 16ms to 25ms. Disabling StreamEngine made no difference. Reinstalling the Netgear drops it back to no added latency...???? Could be something if it was just one other router, but now three decent routers all have a delay impact. Running tracert's shows no delay anomalies with any of the 4...

Update: Spent a couple of hours last night further exploring this additional delay hit. Trialed three gig-wireless routers: the Asus N56U, Dlink DIR-655 and Netgear WNR-854T.

Hard Reset on all routers and cold reboots of Arris cable modem (TWC 7M/386K service). With a direct connect of my PC to the CM, my ping test results are 16ms. With the new Asus N56U (EasyQoS off and Multicast off and verified h/w NAT enabled, as well as turning Multicast on as another test case) my average ping test results were 26ms! Repeated new setup with the DLink DIR-655 router and got the same 25-26ms ping test results. Both routers show 1ms of jitter.

I then pulled out my older Neatgear 854T w- router and with similar config settings tried that one, and then I get 16ms ping results and 0ms jitter!?! All units configured with built-in firewall enabled with SPI enabled. I know there are dozens of different config options with all these routers, but I attempted to keep them all as close as possible.

So, with these results, I'm at a loss to understand where the extra 10ms delay is originating from in this new Asus router (and DLink)?? It was too late to start everything over and play with the Firewall and SPI options, but still, the Netgear router had those options enabled and still had no packet delay overhead.... Thoughts anyone?

 

[klas]

Just discovered limitation that I am not too happy about. I can only reserve IP address for 8 devices! Then I get error "This table only allow 8 items"

 

[sinman02]

Working as an access point with a DIR-655

Hello all. Hope I can get some info and advice here regarding this... I'm not a network engineer so forgive me if I'm not using all the proper terminology. I just ordered the RT-N56U from amazon. I'm hoping to use it primarily to extend the wireless range in my three level home where the connection and cable modem comes in through the basement. I currently have a wired connection to most of my bandwidth hogs but I couldn't get every room hard wired so I have to rely on my wifi connection for these areas. My dir-655 does an adequate job giving me enough bandwidth for basic tasks but not enough to stream video to my second floor master bedroom where I don't have a hard wire connection. I'm hoping to use one of these routers as a wired access point to extend the wifi from my basement by connecting it to my gigabit ethernet connection in my office on the second floor. I'm hoping that doing so will enable me to get enough wifi bandwidth to my master bedroom.

Given all the extra features of the RT-N56U, is it better to use it as my primary router in the basement to take advantage of all the features? i.e. If I use the RT-N56U as the access point, will I still be able to use features like print sharing (my printers are in my office), NAS, ftp, media server, HW acceration (for devices connected directly)? One reason that I may want to use the RT as the access point is that it only provides 16 MAC filters whereas the DIR has 24. Another is that I don't think the DIR has an access point mode so setting it up as one would make me lose a connection port on the switch. Lastly the DIR doesn't have print server function so I would lose that if the RT was in the basement (My printers don't have networking capabilities).

Thanks.