Review on 🔀 ASUS RT-AC56R - Dual-Band 802.11ac Wireless-AC1200 Gigabit Router with AiRadar Technology and USB Ports by Dennis Long

When you spend $90 on a router (instead of $20 for a regular router these days), you expect more, and this one really delivers more. I bought it as a VPN router as ASUS is one of the few brands that support VPN client and server modes out of the box (OpenVPN as well as older protocols like PPTP and L2TP that are hardly used nowadays). other differences. from cheaper routers: 1. Fast dual processor. This is really important, especially if you use a VPN or have more than a few connections. (The cheap router I loaded the Tomato VPN firmware on was CPU limited to only about 1/4 the maximum speed I was able to get with this ASUS router, which is definitely noticeable.) 2. Dual Band 2, 4 and 5.8 GHz and the ability to have multiple guest networks on each of those bands (I think you can get up to 8 different SSIDs from a single router if you really want to (although why you need that is another question ) If you need more bandwidth, you can subscribe to 2 different ISPs and the router will automatically load balance between them ) 3G/4G dongles with built-in software to share the above over the network Some basic router settings and -Monitoring ra from your smartphone. There are a few downsides: - The documentation is very poor. I've been looking for a VPN router, and while ASUS has a very good selection, you'd never guess it by browsing their website, where it's not even mentioned as a back feature, except by coincidence (you certainly can't look for routers look for ones that support it). Quick Start Guide is even rarer ). Therefore, the only way to learn about and use advanced features is to (a) assume they exist before you buy a modem, (b) check all the options in the web interface if you have a modem , and (c) already knowing what All Functions mean and what they do - The web interface is buggy. The performance live screen doesn't update, and worse, if you click on it, you'll be logged out and have to log back into your router. The VPN Client tab is also buggy and often causes the web interface to freeze completely, requiring a router restart. And that after I updated the firmware to the latest version. However, once you set it up, it seems stable. - Small quibble, but who on earth decided to put tiny dark gray letters on a black background with illegible symbols to indicate what the indicators mean?! You'll need a flashlight and a magnifying glass (and some imagination to translate the symbols into text). Why not just "Internet", "LAN", "WAN", "WiFi" etc. in nice white letters on a dark background?