Review on 📶 High-Performance Asus Dual Band Wireless-N 600 SOHO Router with Fast Ethernet, 8 Guest SSID & Parental Access Time Control (RT-N53) by Eric Salem

I bought this router in 2012 because I needed to replace a ten year old Microsoft branded 802.11g box that was hopelessly outdated and I wanted to add a 5GHz network to alleviate congestion issues in to reduce my area. At first I was impressed by the breadth of options and customization options, but it soon turned out that the network part of the 5GHz router was completely unstable. The English used on the setup and administration pages was also ridiculously bad. But the 2.4GHz part has always worked flawlessly and had the best range of any low-end dual-band router I've tried, so I kept it. Unfortunately, this was a big mistake. It's been a common problem ever since, from firmware updates failing, to updates that worked but breaking vital functionality, to regular freezes, crashes, and outright crashes occurring at random times. I simply cannot recommend this or any other product more. Asus router. based on poor performance, poor firmware and poor reliability of this router. What excites me so much is that the part I'm less interested in works great: the 2.4GHz network is great. Good range, good throughput, and it never goes down unless the entire router gets blocked (as it did just 15 minutes ago, which prompted me to update this review). When it works, it's amazing. The range is very good on channels 149 and above (the router operates in higher power mode on these channels than on 2-digit channels). But it only works for 5 minutes to 5 hours before all devices shut down and power off. Since all my devices automatically switch to the 2.4GHz side of the network, I don't lose connection for long, but what's the point of turning on 5GHz if it never works properly? Not only that, but the aforementioned problem of blocking the entire router is only present when the 5GHz band is active. If I disable the radio completely, the router works fine for the most part. This is incredibly frustrating. Updating the firmware is another issue. It is imperative that they are run from a computer connected directly to the router's Ethernet port. They do NOT work over Wi-Fi. But even with that caveat, I've had a firmware update failure to the point where I'm left with a dead router with a blinking power light. The device could not be revived by any published reset methods and only revived when I discovered an obscure firmware download file for Windows that bypassed the router's internal (broken) software. The second previous firmware update actually broke some functionality, causing the router to run noticeably slower. An update released in February finally fixed this, but the 5GHz network is still not working properly. In short, in my opinion, this is an "avoid at all costs" purchase. There are pure 2.4GHz routers that are cheaper, more stable, and easier to use than this one, and dual-band routers that cost a bit more but perform almost the same, barring constant crashes and other headaches. Update March 2014: I finally achieved some stability in the 5GHz network by reducing the channel bandwidth from 40MHz to 20MHz, but the bandwidth is not very high at the moment. Either as a byproduct of the changes I made or the February firmware update, but now the router freezes randomly and needs to be cycled off and on from time to time. This happens from once a week to three times a day.