N66U upgrade over N56U

[Carnagerover]

Hi all,

My father needed a new router so I gave him my current N55U and it gave me an excuse to buy the newer N66U, I have had some teething issues like the wireless dropping on my Apple devices and such. Also when streaming from Plex I was getting some Stuttering that wasn't apart before. I fixed this by turning off Enhance Interference Management however I'm starting to feel a little like I have downgraded rather than upgraded. Does the N66U have a hardware NAT as I am seeing conflicting information on that as well?

Just feeling buyers remorse I guess on this at the moment

 

[Carnagerover]

Anyone wish to make me feel better?

 

[Carnagerover]

Basically I would like to know if this router has a Hardware Nat and is it actually better than the N56U?

 

[RMerlin]

Comparing the two routers is a bit like apple to oranges, since they use completely different chips. "Hardware NAT" is more or less a marketing name for things that can work entirely differently depending on the chip used.

There is some form of "optimized" NAT feature in the RT-N66U (called CTF), which won't work if you enable QoS however. Is it "Hardware NAT"? Depends on how you define Hardware NAT. Personally, I'd say neither of these is hardware, as they both use IPTables to do NAT.

What would make more sense is to compare WAN to LAN throughput when you have multiple concurrent connections. Compare the benchmarks posted on SmallNetBuilder to see the actual result.

 

[Carnagerover]

Comparing the two routers is a bit like apple to oranges, since they use completely different chips. "Hardware NAT" is more or less a marketing name for things that can work entirely differently depending on the chip used.

There is some form of "optimized" NAT feature in the RT-N66U (called CTF), which won't work if you enable QoS however. Is it "Hardware NAT"? Depends on how you define Hardware NAT. Personally, I'd say neither of these is hardware, as they both use IPTables to do NAT.

What would make more sense is to compare WAN to LAN throughput when you have multiple concurrent connections. Compare the benchmarks posted on SmallNetBuilder to see the actual result.

Hi Merlin and thanks for the reply, I have just flashed my router with your firmware today, seems great so far. I was having problems with wireless stability which seems to be ok now.

When I looked on the performance charts it seems to me that the N56U blows the N66U out of the water which doesn't make a great deal of sense. I'm unsure why they changed hardware effectively making it slower I can only assume it is to get greater wifi.

 

[RogerSC]

Hi Merlin and thanks for the reply, I have just flashed my router with your firmware today, seems great so far. I was having problems with wireless stability which seems to be ok now.

When I looked on the performance charts it seems to me that the N56U blows the N66U out of the water which doesn't make a great deal of sense. I'm unsure why they changed hardware effectively making it slower I can only assume it is to get greater wifi.

Yes, however if you look at this closer, I doubt that you could use all the wired throughput offered by the rt-n56u. The wired throughput provided by the rt-n66u is all that most all of us need. However, if you compare the wifi, you'll find that the rt-n66u performs better. And there are other features that the rt-n66u also has over the feature set of the rt-n56u. I was using the rt-n56u when I got the rt-n66u, and the rt-n56u is now a backup router. I was going to use the rt-n56u as an AP, but find with the better wireless performance of the rt-n66u, I don't need an AP. Unlike the rt-n56u, the rt-n66u wireless covers my whole house very well.

 

[RMerlin]

What he said. You lose a bit here, but you also gain a bit there. When it comes to wireless coverage, the RT-x66 line of products will be much better due to their external antennas.

 

[Carnagerover]

What he said. You lose a bit here, but you also gain a bit there. When it comes to wireless coverage, the RT-x66 line of products will be much better due to their external antennas.

Thanks again for the firmware Merlin, my wifi is stable and the 5ghz is way better on this compared to the N56-U. Not regretting this at all now and I haven't come into any performance issues with routing and don't think that I will either.