Linksys E4200 or Asus RT-56U

[Crashed]

Hi everyone,

So I'm stuck on deciding between these two routers. What would you guys pick between the two:

Linksys E4200 - Seems nice, solid, and simple

Asus RT-56U - Seems fast, solid, feature rich

Hopefully by tonight I hope to carry one of these home to my apartment, where I'm dying to be untethered from my Comcast modem..

Thank you

 

[aphexacid]

I've tried both of these in my condo. I really liked the asus, but i had a few problems that might be of no concern with you.

Asus gave me a few dead spots with signal that all other routers i tried did not.
The gui is terrible in my opinion.
UPNP wasnt working properly.
and the unit runs kinda hot.......Still, it never froze or needed rebooting.


I think the E4200 is an excellent piece. The only thing killing me right now is the slower than average usb speed.

 

[Crashed]

Thanks for the input Aphexacid. I'm generally a Linksys guy, they seem to be the "safer" bet as far as reliability and coverage. Asus seems like a supped router, has a lot of neat USB features, ect. But now that you mention the heat, that is certainly a concern.

I plan to mostly be in my living room and maybe 100 feet down to my bedroom at best. Not sure how well either Asus or Linksys will work in that range, I imagined not much of a issue eitherway.

Thank you for the info though, so I'm slowly leaning on Linksys so far. The extra $30 is a tad sucky but if it's a awesome router with reliable cool function, I can't argue.

 

[aphexacid]

Heat was one thing I was mindful of when I tried out all the routers over the past month. The e4200 stays in the warm zone no matter what you do with it. Identical to my wrt54gl I had running for 7 years. The Asus however is very small, and got instantly warm. I wasn't even finished setting it up when I noticed. Transferring lots of files and watching some shows on netflix made it really hot. Still didn't freeze though.

I have loads of 2.4ghz ap's around me, and I'm guessing that's the major hurdle for my 2.4ghz performance. I stick to 5ghz for my computers and life is swell.
I compared the range and speeds in the same spots on all the routers, and the e4200 did the best job by far. I think your 100 feet would be ok.

If you have a Fry's close by, they have pretty much every router you can think of including the asus. You could always try it out.
Newegg has the best deal on the e4200 though, and you can get it price matched at fry's

 

[Shikami]

I honestly have not had a problem with my RT-N56U and found it to be a capable performer. However, there is an issue that presently concerns me most and this is only for the hardware acceleration for NAT that the router can perform. Apparently, the acceleration feature of the router can cause issues with VPN. A recent firmware has NAT handlers that actually disable the feature if L2TP and Ipsec are toggled. Also, QoS does disable the HW NAT acceleration too. But I do not need to use this and found with multiple hosts and my bandwidth that the router handles the data very well. Well, enough that it did not increase my latency when playing Bad Company 2 and my roommate was streaming videos.

As for thermal issues, I have found my unit only to ever be a little warm when feeling the chassis, and thermal properties are something I always check of ever piece of hardware too. UPnP functions properly without issue. XBox 360 and many games I have hosted via this function, but I speculate the Aphexacid could be talking about DLNA? Which has been patched to minidlna and is more functional, proper. To note though, it does not have the DLNA seal of approval as of now.

I personally prefer routers that are based on Ubicom processors and their networking operating system. Which are usually DLink based products. This replaced my aging DGL-4500, and I am pleased to a point. But I do not like features that make a router unique with attributes and performance to suddenly become disabled when an option is toggled. What is the purpose of the features if only to be disabled for basic functionality that should be expected of every router? There are other disappointing issues such as limited static DHCP host support, port forwarding is a bit complicated compared to many other routers, English usage is horrible, no Ipv6 support, and menu layout is very horrible but not difficult to navigate. Because of this, I personally cannot recommend the RT-N56U. I do not fully believe in the product to be worthy of it. As for the E4200 I have no hands on therefore no opinion.

 

[aphexacid]

Aphexacid could be talking about DLNA?

No its definitely UPNP im talking about. Utorrent and a couple other things were showing that their respective ports were closed.


Here's something to ponder though. My E4200 gave up the ghost yesterday. Not completely, but the 5Ghz radio started dropping all connections. Then wouldnt let me connect anymore. Then all of the sudden it just stopped appearing completely. All i could see is my 2.4ghz side of the e4200. And that too was giving me MAJOR performance issues. I tried everything i could think of, and in the end i did something i havent done in YEARS.

I called linksys tech support. It was painful. In the end the guy told me "it appears to be broken"

So i called up Newegg and got an RMA. I am not happy about this.

I actually pondered defaulting to the ASUS, and overlooking the issues i spoke of. But there are bad pieces in all things, so i'll give it another shot.

Its probably going to take 2 weeks before i see anything higher than 22Mbps since i'm back on my WRT54GL.

Ole faithul.

sigh.....

 

[Shikami]

No its definitely UPNP im talking about. Utorrent and a couple other things were showing that their respective ports were closed.

I use uTorrent too. I will download some Vodo movies and then let them seed a bit. Worked as it should. Games for Windows and XBox360 worked with UPnP also. I have hosted co-op games for Dawn of War II and other games. Even Skype will tap the UPnP-IGD. Did you ever look in the system log (dmesg) to see if the port(s) was (were) opened?

Here is an output from mine just created for Games for Windows: May 19 07:49:03 upnpd[925]: AddPortMap: DevUDN: uuid:5f75f342-9f96-4ecc-9dbd-20cf30b7a737 ServiceID: urn:upnp-org:serviceId:WANIPConn1 RemoteHost: (null) Prot: UDP ExtPort: 3074 Int: 192.168.0.2.3074

UPnP function was nominal for me with the latter and most recent firmwares. Also, the most amount of complaints are from people that have VPN connectivity issues. I have not seen any due to UPnP except you so far. Not saying that there is not, but I do pay attention to the commonality of the issues I see reported on forums.

Were you using your WRT54GL in conjunction with your RT-N56U?

 

[Crashed]

Hi Guys,

Wanted to give a heads up, I ended up going with the ASUS router, for now at least, a tad cheaper and all. So far it's running good, no heat issues.

Sorry to hear about your issues Aphexacid, sucks. I have to say you are right when it comes to bad parts being everywhere, some more than others. I have had similar experience with Netgear and Dlink, which is why I tend to stay away from them.

Hopefully your new router will fix the problem.

 

[aphexacid]

I use uTorrent too. I will download some Vodo movies and then let them seed a bit. Worked as it should. Games for Windows and XBox360 worked with UPnP also. I have hosted co-op games for Dawn of War II and other games. Even Skype will tap the UPnP-IGD. Did you ever look in the system log (dmesg) to see if the port(s) was (were) opened?

Here is an output from mine just created for Games for Windows: May 19 07:49:03 upnpd[925]: AddPortMap: DevUDN: uuid:5f75f342-9f96-4ecc-9dbd-20cf30b7a737 ServiceID: urn:upnp-org:serviceId:WANIPConn1 RemoteHost: (null) Prot: UDP ExtPort: 3074 Int: 192.168.0.2.3074

UPnP function was nominal for me with the latter and most recent firmwares. Also, the most amount of complaints are from people that have VPN connectivity issues. I have not seen any due to UPnP except you so far. Not saying that there is not, but I do pay attention to the commonality of the issues I see reported on forums.

Were you using your WRT54GL in conjunction with your RT-N56U?

No i wasn't using the 54GL at all. I dont know what could have been the issue honestly. I didnt see anywhere to enable upnp so i'm assuming it was just 'on'. I never got around to doing a firmware update before i returned it either. utorrent, soulseek, skype, transmission for mac....all complained of ports being closed. I suppose i could have had a defective one, but everything else ran perfectly. It did run hot though.

@Crashed.... I'm glad you settled upon the Asus! Hopefully it does you well for a looooong time. My e4200 still hasnt been received by newegg yet since im in Chicago and they're in Cali. I probably wont have my replacement until the end of NEXT week. I miss my easy ftp access and usb storage

This is the last shot i give the E4200 though. If this one croaks on me, its going back and i'm getting the Asus, issues or not. 1 is my limit for faulty hardware.