ASUS RT-N65U
Introduction
The marketing element of N600 and N900 in names of the products is of not much interest to us already for a long time, but today we are hosting an ASUS RT-N65U wireless router that has N750 written on its case. This device supports simultaneous operation under two wireless frequency ranges: 2.4 GHz and 5GHz, however with different performance. The maximum theoretically possible frequency throughput within 2.4 GHz range is 300 Mbps, while within 5 GHz frequency range RT-N65U can theoretically provide 450 Mpbs. Despite the fact that the device first appeared in our laboratory late in 2011, we managed to successfully finish all tests just recently. Well, let's not linger any more and pass directly to reviewing it in detail!
External design and hardware
ASUS RT-N65U wireless router appearance is really similar to that of RT-N56U we had reviewed earlier: it has the same ribbed surface of the front panel, the same arrangement of ports, the same stand, and so on. The dimensions of RT-N65U are 172x145x60 mm including the support stand. To work properly the device needs an external power unit (included in the box) with the following characteristics: 19V and 1.58А.
The only thing different between RT-N65U and RT-N56U is the rear panel, if you can call it this way.
RT-N65U has two USB 3.0 ports and a power switch. However, its size, shape, and placement puzzled us. Couldn't it have been made a bit bigger or placed in a different spot? It'd be barely possible to reach it if there are USB devices connected to the router.
Insides of ASUS RT-N65U wireless router are one red textolite card, main elements of which are located on both of its sides, but are mostly covered with heat sinks and protective screens.
Two RAM modules—16 MByte Winbond W9812G6JH-6 and 64 MByte EtronTech EM68B16CWQD-25H—and Asmedia ASM1042 host controller of the USB 3.0 bus are not covered by anything.
Now let's skip on to reviewing the software platform of the device.
Firmware upgrade
Firmware upgrade is carried out in Firmware Upgrade tab, Administration group in the web-interface. The procedure can be carried out really easily and doesn't require any technical knowledge from the user since s/he will only need to specify the file that had been downloaded from the vendor's website and click on Upload button.
The whole process takes about three minutes.
It'd be all really fine if not for a frustrating notification telling one about the obligatory manual reboot of the device after the firmware upgrade process is finished. We believe that the notification of this kind would be really helpful if shown before getting down to the firmware upgrade procedure since if there's no possibility to access the router physically to reboot it, the upgrade will make it fully unavailable.
In case of a failure during the firmware upgrade, the administrator can use a special-purpose utility called Firmware Restoration that is meant to restore the firmware in ASUS wireless routers. The recovery process is easy enough; one just needs to choose a file with the applicable firmware and click on Upload button.
The recovery process via the utility takes about three minutes, too.
One can find out whether the firmware restore needs to be done or not by looking at the device Power LED. If it's the case, it will start slowly flashing in the rescue mode. Also, it'd be fair to mention that the administrator can manually switch RT-N65U over to the rescue mode. To do that s/he only needs to hold Reset button for 10 seconds while the device is booting.
Apart from the method of firmware restore in Windows described above, the user also can do it manually using any TFTP client and traffic analyzer. Once ASUS RT-N65U has loaded in the rescue mode, one will need to get connected to one of its LAN ports and enable traffic capturing. We did it using Wireshark utility.
As you can see, the router sends out ARP requests about 192.168.1.11 from 192.168.1.1 really often. We assign 192.168.1.11 IP address to our test station, named the firmware file ASUSSPACELINK, and uploaded it to the router using TFTP.
C:\>tftp -i 192.168.1.1 put c:\ASUSSPACELINK
Successfully sent: 12669296 bytes for 4 sec., 3167324 bytes/s
Naturally, we recommend our readers to use only official firmware recovery methods.
Apart from the firmwares released by the device vendor, one can use alternative firmwares that are developed by, say, the project of Padavan user. Upgrading to the above-mentioned firmware is carried out in a conventional way. In order to switch back to the original firmware the user will need to enter Firware Upgrade tab, Administration group, Additional menu item in the web interface where s/he will be able to choose the corresponding file and upload it.
Now let's review capabilities of the device web-interface.
Web-interface
RT-N65U web-interface is really similar to that of RT-N66U, the model by the same brand that we had reviewed earlier. That's exactly why we will not review all capabilities of its web-interface in detail, but only talk about the newest or most interesting features from our point of view. Support of HTTPS came to be a really nice new feature that can be used to access the device.
A new application for work with data stored on an external USB disc was added: it's called Media Server and lets the users gain access to the multimedia data over the network.
New section AiCloud provides users of portable devices with wireless access to the data stored on a disc or resources in other nodes.
Tabs in Wireless group in Additional settings menu let the administrator manage operation parameters of the Wi-Fi module. Among the interesting features of the web-interface there is a possibility of specifying the channel capacity manually so that the device may always use 40 MHz channels as well as a possibility of separate management of wireless module operation scheduling on workdays and weekends.
IPTV and Switch Control tabs in LAN group give one a possibility of flexible management of set-top boxes of the user and provide the user with tools that help him/her to limit the transfer speeds of certain types of traffic.
ASUS RT-N65U wireless router can get connected to the provider with both static and dynamic addresses as well as using the tunnel protocols: PPPoE, L2TP, and PPTP. Apart from it, the administrator can enable or disable passage of the following protocols from the local network to the WAN: PPTP, L2TP, IPSec, and RTSP. Also, one can enable PPPoE translation. The applicable settings are located in sub-sections in WAN group.
Apart from operation with the old IPv4, the router under review also supports operation with the newest protocol, IPv6. These settings are located in the same-named group.
Remote access to the internal local network behind the router is possible via the Internet using a VPN server (PPTP) that is built in the router. One can manage these settings in VPN tab in the menu. It's worth mentioning that in the latest firmware versions support of OpenVPN as a VPN server was added.
Operation mode and System tabs in Administration group let the user choose the device operation mode and specify the parameters of the user access to the router.
That is where we bring a really short device web-interface review to a conclusion and pass on to the section dedicated to additional utilities.
Utilities
Users of ASUS RT-N65U wireless router can use several light but really helpful programmes. Among them there is Router Setup Wizard utility that helps one facilitate the procedure of connection of the device to certain large service providers in Russia.
More detailed adjustment can be carried out using the wizard in the device web-interface.
Printer Setup Utility is used in order to facilitate the connection of the network printer to a local node.
Detection of wireless ASUS devices within the local network segment is carried out using Device Discovery programme.
Also, there is another utility that is included in the utility pack of ASUS RT-N65U wireless router. It's called Firmware Restoration, but we had already reviewed its capabilities in this article.
Command line
By default, the access to the device command line is prohibited. One needs to use System tab, Administration group in order to enable it.
One will need to use the same login and password as for the web-interface in order to access the command line. It's admin/admin by default. Traditionally, there is BusyBox library installed there.
RT-N65U login: admin
Password:
ASUSWRT RT-N65U_3.0.0.4 Tue Nov 6 18:07:06 UTC 2012
admin@RT-N65U:/tmp/home/root#
admin@RT-N65U:/tmp/home/root# busybox
BusyBox v1.17.4 (2012-11-07 02:07:05 CST) multi-call binary.
Copyright (C) 1998-2009 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenko
and others. Licensed under GPLv2.
See source distribution for full notice.
Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]...
or: function [arguments]...
BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix
utilities into a single executable. Most people will create a
link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox
will act like whatever it was invoked as.
Currently defined functions:
[, [[, arp, arping, ash, awk, basename, blkid, cat, chmod, chown, chpasswd, clear, cmp, cp, crond, cut, date,
dd, df, dirname, dmesg, du, e2fsck, echo, egrep, env, ether-wake, expr, fdisk, fgrep, find, flock, free,
fsck.ext2, fsck.ext3, fsck.minix, fsync, ftpget, ftpput, grep, gunzip, gzip, head, ifconfig, insmod, kill,
killall, klogd, less, ln, logger, login, ls, lsmod, lsusb, md5sum, mkdir, mkdosfs, mke2fs, mkfs.ext2,
mkfs.ext3, mkfs.vfat, mknod, mkswap, modprobe, more, mount, mv, nc, netstat, nice, nohup, nslookup, pidof,
ping, ping6, printf, ps, pscan, pwd, readlink, renice, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, sed, sendmail, setconsole, sh,
sleep, sort, strings, swapoff, swapon, sync, syslogd, tail, tar, telnet, telnetd, test, tftp, top, touch, tr,
traceroute, traceroute6, true, tune2fs, udhcpc, umount, uname, unzip, uptime, usleep, vconfig, vi, watch, wc,
wget, which, zcat, zcip
admin@RT-N65U:/tmp/home/root# uname -a
Linux RT-N65U 3.0.0 #1 Wed Nov 7 02:31:36 CST 2012 mips GNU/Linux
Let's see what processes are currently running using ps command. By using top utility one can obtain information on the current activity of the launched processes.
admin@RT-N65U:/tmp/home/root# ps
PID USER VSZ STAT COMMAND
1 admin 2136 S /sbin/init
2 admin 0 SW [kthreadd]
3 admin 0 SW [ksoftirqd/0]
4 admin 0 SW [kworker/0:0]
5 admin 0 SW [kworker/u:0]
6 admin 0 SW [rcu_kthread]
7 admin 0 SW< [khelper]
65 admin 0 SW [sync_supers]
67 admin 0 SW [bdi-default]
68 admin 0 SW< [kblockd]
99 admin 0 SW [kswapd0]
100 admin 0 SW [fsnotify_mark]
101 admin 0 SW< [crypto]
191 admin 0 SW [mtdblock0]
196 admin 0 SW [mtdblock1]
201 admin 0 SW [mtdblock2]
206 admin 0 SW [mtdblock3]
211 admin 0 SW [mtdblock4]
216 admin 0 SW [mtdblock5]
459 admin 660 S hotplug2 --persistent --no-coldplug
475 admin 0 SW [RaCfg Task]
476 admin 0 SW [RaCfg Backlog]
500 admin 1984 S console
502 admin 1612 S /bin/sh
505 admin 0 SWN [jffs2_gcd_mtd5]
507 admin 1600 S syslogd -m 0 -S -O /jffs/syslog.log -s 256 -l 7
510 admin 1600 S /sbin/klogd
515 admin 0 SW [khubd]
583 admin 1992 S usbled
585 admin 0 SW [scsi_eh_0]
586 admin 0 SW [usb-storage]
621 admin 0 SW [kworker/0:2]
631 admin 0 SW [kworker/u:2]
670 admin 0 SW [RtmpCmdQTask]
671 admin 0 SW [RtmpWscTask]
685 admin 1992 S /sbin/wanduck
688 admin 1608 S udhcpc -i vlan2 -p /var/run/udhcpc0.pid -s /tmp/udhcpc -O33 -O249
696 admin 1992 S wpsaide
699 admin 1604 R telnetd
701 nobody 996 S dnsmasq --log-async
703 admin 3536 S httpd
704 admin 1036 S /usr/sbin/infosvr br0
705 admin 1040 S networkmap
707 admin 1992 S watchdog
709 admin 1240 S rstats
719 admin 1124 S lld2d br0
724 admin 1992 S ots
726 admin 748 S miniupnpd -f /etc/upnp/config
740 admin 2056 S u2ec
742 admin 1128 S lpd
746 admin 2056 S u2ec
747 admin 2056 S u2ec
761 admin 2396 S nmbd -D -s /etc/smb.conf
762 admin 3260 S N smbd -D -s /etc/smb.conf
770 admin 1624 S -sh
781 admin 0 SW [flush-mtd-unmap]
789 admin 1604 R ps
Mem: 27100K used, 98916K free, 0K shrd, 3000K buff, 8484K cached
CPU: 0% usr 0% sys 0% nic 99% idle 0% io 0% irq 0% sirq
Load average: 0.00 0.07 0.10 1/57 794
PID PPID USER STAT VSZ %MEM %CPU COMMAND
792 770 admin R 1612 1% 0% top
699 1 admin S 1604 1% 0% telnetd
703 1 admin S 3536 3% 0% httpd
762 1 admin S N 3260 3% 0% smbd -D -s /etc/smb.conf
761 1 admin S 2396 2% 0% nmbd -D -s /etc/smb.conf
1 0 admin S 2136 2% 0% /sbin/init
740 1 admin S 2056 2% 0% u2ec
746 740 admin S 2056 2% 0% u2ec
747 746 admin S 2056 2% 0% u2ec
707 1 admin S 1992 2% 0% watchdog
583 1 admin S 1992 2% 0% usbled
685 1 admin S 1992 2% 0% /sbin/wanduck
724 707 admin S 1992 2% 0% ots
696 1 admin S 1992 2% 0% wpsaide
500 1 admin S 1984 2% 0% console
770 699 admin S 1624 1% 0% -sh
502 500 admin S 1612 1% 0% /bin/sh
688 1 admin S 1608 1% 0% udhcpc -i vlan2 -p /var/run/udhcpc0.pid -s /tmp/udhcpc -O33 -O249
507 1 admin S 1600 1% 0% syslogd -m 0 -S -O /jffs/syslog.log -s 256 -l 7
510 1 admin S 1600 1% 0% /sbin/klogd
709 1 admin S 1240 1% 0% rstats
742 1 admin S 1128 1% 0% lpd
719 1 admin S 1124 1% 0% lld2d br0
705 1 admin S 1040 1% 0% networkmap
704 1 admin S 1036 1% 0% /usr/sbin/infosvr br0
701 1 nobody S 996 1% 0% dnsmasq --log-async
726 1 admin S 748 1% 0% miniupnpd -f /etc/upnp/config
459 1 admin S 660 1% 0% hotplug2 --persistent --no-coldplug
6 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [rcu_kthread]
211 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [mtdblock4]
475 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [RaCfg Task]
65 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [sync_supers]
621 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [kworker/0:2]
505 2 admin SWN 0 0% 0% [jffs2_gcd_mtd5]
586 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [usb-storage]
5 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [kworker/u:0]
585 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [scsi_eh_0]
201 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [mtdblock2]
670 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [RtmpCmdQTask]
476 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [RaCfg Backlog]
515 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [khubd]
2 0 admin SW 0 0% 0% [kthreadd]
3 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [ksoftirqd/0]
4 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [kworker/0:0]
216 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [mtdblock5]
631 2 admin SW 0 0% 0% [kworker/u:2]
Let's find out what kind of content /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, and /usr/sbin catalogues have.
admin@RT-N65U:/# ls /bin
ash cp ecmh gzip ls netstat ps rtinicapd tar vi
busybox date egrep iwconfig mkdir nice pwd sdparm touch watch
cat dd fgrep iwpriv mknod nvram rm sed true wscd
chmod df fsync kill more pidof rmdir sh umount zcat
chown dmesg grep ln mount ping rstats sleep uname
comgt echo gunzip login mv ping6 rt2860apd sync usleep
admin@RT-N65U:/# ls /sbin
8367m free_caches mkdosfs setconsole
ATE fsck.ext2 mke2fs setup_dnsmq
FREAD fsck.ext3 mkfs.ext2 sigmon
FWRITE fsck.minix mkfs.ext3 swapoff
add_account fsck.msdos mkfs.vfat swapon
add_folder fsck.vfat mkswap switchmode
add_multi_routes get_account_list mod_account syslogd
arp get_all_folder mod_folder tcpcheck
asus-raether get_apps_name modify_if_exist_new_folder test_disk1
asus_lp get_folder_list modprobe test_disk2
asus_sd get_permission mtd-erase test_if_exist_account
asus_sg get_phy_speed mtd-unlock test_if_exist_share
asus_sr get_phy_status mtd-write test_of_var_files
asus_tty get_var_file_name ntp test_share
asus_usb_interface gpio ots tune2fs
asus_usbbcm halt pc udevtrigger
ated hotplug radio udhcpc
auto_macclone hotplug2 rc usbled
autodet how_many_layer rcheck vconfig
blkid hw_nat read_sms wanduck
console ifconfig reboot watchdog
create_if_no_var_files init reg wimaxc
ddns_updated initial_all_var_file restart_wireless wimaxd
del_account initial_folder_list rmmod wlcconnect
del_folder initial_var_file route wlcscan
dhcp6c-state insmod rtkswitch wpsaide
disk_monitor ipv6aide run_app_script wpsfix
dosfsck klogd run_pptpd write_smb_conf
e2fsck led run_telnetd write_webdav_conf
ejusb lsmod send_sms zcip
fdisk mem_usage service
flash mii_mgr set_permission
admin@RT-N65U:/# ls /usr/bin
[ cmp expr head nc renice test unzip
[[ cut find killall nohup smbpasswd tftp uptime
arping dirname flock less nslookup sort top wc
awk du free logger printf strings tr wget
basename env ftpget lsusb pscan tail traceroute which
clear ether-wake ftpput md5sum readlink telnet traceroute6
admin@RT-N65U:/# ls /usr/sbin
3ginfo.sh app_update.sh ez-ipupdate lighttpd-monitor scsi-stop
app_base_library.sh app_upgrade.sh gctwimax lld2d sendmail
app_base_link.sh asuswebstorage gencert.sh lpd smbd
app_base_packages.sh bcrelay httpd madwimax sysinfo
app_cancel.sh brctl igmpproxy miniupnpd tc
app_check_pool.sh chat infosvr networkmap telnetd
app_fsck.sh chkntfs inotify nmbd u2ec
app_fsck_all.sh chpasswd ip ntfsfix udpxy
app_get_field.sh chpasswd.sh ip6tables ntpclient usb_modeswitch
app_init_run.sh crond ip6tables-restore openssl vsftpd
app_install.sh cru iptables pppd webs_update.sh
app_move_to_pool.sh dhcp6c iptables-restore pppoe-relay webs_upgrade.sh
app_remove.sh dhcp6s l2tp-control pptpctrl wpa_cli
app_set_enabled.sh dnsmasq l2tpd pptpd wpa_supplicant
app_stop.sh ebtables lighttpd radvd xtables-multi
app_switch.sh event.sh lighttpd-arpping scsi-start
Looks like /rom/Beceem_firmware catalogue features files that are somehow associated with Yota service provider.
admin@RT-N65U:/# ls /rom/Beceem_firmware/
RemoteProxy.cfg macxvi.cfg.freshtel macxvi.cfg.yota
Server_CA.pem.yota macxvi.cfg.gmc macxvi200.bin
Now let's turn to /proc catalogue to view its contents and find out the system uptime, its average utilisation, information on the CPU installed, and the amount of RAM. Actually, system uptime and average system utilisation can also be learnt using uptime command.
admin@RT-N65U:/# cd /proc
admin@RT-N65U:/proc# ls
1 500 68 742 diskstats meminfo sys
100 502 685 746 driver misc sysrq-trigger
101 505 688 747 execdomains modules sysvipc
191 507 696 761 filesystems mounts timer_list
196 510 699 762 fs mtd tty
2 515 7 770 interrupts net uptime
201 583 701 831 iomem nvram version
206 585 703 834 ioports pagetypeinfo vmallocinfo
211 586 704 99 irq partitions vmstat
216 6 705 buddyinfo kallsyms rt3883 zoneinfo
3 621 707 bus kcore scsi
4 631 709 cmdline kmsg self
459 65 719 consoles kpagecount slabinfo
475 67 724 cpuinfo kpageflags softirqs
476 670 726 crypto loadavg stat
5 671 740 devices locks swaps
admin@RT-N65U:/proc# cat uptime
1379.00 1342.60
admin@RT-N65U:/proc# cat loadavg
0.02 0.04 0.06 1/57 836
admin@RT-N65U:/proc# cat cpuinfo
system type : Ralink SoC
processor : 0
cpu model : MIPS 74Kc V4.12
BogoMIPS : 249.34
wait instruction : yes
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : yes
hardware watchpoint : yes, count: 4, address/irw mask: [0x0000, 0x0110, 0x0508, 0x05e8]
ASEs implemented : mips16 dsp
shadow register sets : 1
kscratch registers : 0
core : 0
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
admin@RT-N65U:/proc# cat meminfo
MemTotal: 126016 kB
MemFree: 98664 kB
Buffers: 3060 kB
Cached: 8568 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 7044 kB
Inactive: 8228 kB
Active(anon): 3712 kB
Inactive(anon): 2112 kB
Active(file): 3332 kB
Inactive(file): 6116 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 3656 kB
Mapped: 2868 kB
Shmem: 2180 kB
Slab: 6296 kB
SReclaimable: 1044 kB
SUnreclaim: 5252 kB
KernelStack: 456 kB
PageTables: 424 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 63008 kB
Committed_AS: 11648 kB
VmallocTotal: 1048372 kB
VmallocUsed: 4636 kB
VmallocChunk: 1038860 kB
admin@RT-N65U:/proc# uptime
04:23:31 up 23 min, load average: 0.07, 0.05, 0.06
admin@RT-N65U:/proc#
Let's find out what sessions are set by the clients to the router using netstat command.
admin@RT-N65U:/# netstat
Active Internet connections (w/o servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 127 ::ffff:192.168.1.1:telnet ::ffff:192.168.1.2:58409 ESTABLISHED
Active UNIX domain sockets (w/o servers)
Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node Path
unix 6 [ ] DGRAM 272 /dev/log
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 1112
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 628
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 573
unix 2 [ ] DGRAM 274
One can learn the list of file systems and encryption types supported in files named /proc/filesystems and /proc/crypto.
admin@RT-N65U:/# cat /proc/filesystems
nodev sysfs
nodev rootfs
nodev bdev
nodev proc
nodev tmpfs
nodev sockfs
nodev pipefs
nodev anon_inodefs
nodev devpts
squashfs
nodev ramfs
nodev mtd_inodefs
nodev jffs2
nodev usbfs
ext3
ext2
vfat
ufsd
admin@RT-N65U:/# cat /proc/crypto
name : ecb(arc4)
driver : ecb(arc4-generic)
module : kernel
priority : 0
refcnt : 1
selftest : passed
type : blkcipher
blocksize : 1
min keysize : 1
max keysize : 256
ivsize : 0
geniv : <default>
name : stdrng
driver : krng
module : kernel
priority : 200
refcnt : 1
selftest : passed
type : rng
seedsize : 0
name : arc4
driver : arc4-generic
module : kernel
priority : 0
refcnt : 1
selftest : passed
type : cipher
blocksize : 1
min keysize : 1
max keysize : 256
name : sha1
driver : sha1-generic
module : kernel
priority : 0
refcnt : 1
selftest : passed
type : shash
blocksize : 64
digestsize : 20
Sysinfo utility from /usr/sbin catalogue shows detailed information on the device and its settings. We decided to present the utility output in an individual file.
We can't help to mention nvram utility that allows changing certain important device operation parameters.
admin@RT-N65U:/# nvram
usage: nvram [get name] [set name=value] [unset name] [show] [save file] [restore file]
admin@RT-N65U:/# nvram show | grep admin
size: 27558 bytes (33882 left)
http_username=admin
http_passwd=admin
acc_list=admin>admin
acc_webdavproxy=admin>1
That's where we proceed to completion of the brief review of the command line interface capabilities and pass directly on to testing the device.
Testing
The first testing procedure we always begin our testing section with is estimating the booting time of the device, which is a time interval starting with the moment when the power is on until the first echo reply is received through ICMP. ASUS RT-N65U wireless router boots in 57 seconds. We believe that this result is decent.
The second test was a security scanning procedure, which has been carried out using Positive Technologies XSpider 7.7 (Demo build 3100) utility.
We decided to begin the performance tests of ASUS RT-N65U with measuring user data transmission speeds in the wireless segment of the network. The diagram provided below shows speed values that we received in both of the frequency ranges.
Then we decided to carry out the measurements upon operation only in the wired segment. ASUS RT-N65U supports NAT/PAT hardware acceleration. We decided to find out data transfer speeds both when the acceleration was enabled and disabled.
Also, the wireless router under review possesses a possibility to switch off the translation, i.e. it simply can carry out solely routing functions.
Neither have we overlooked the performance of the router upon connection to the provider using PPTP. Results of the measurements for encrypted tunnels and tunnels without encryption are presented on the diagram below.
ASUS RT-N65U has a built-in feature of acting as a VPN client and server either for connection to a remote corporate network or providing remote users with access to the local network of the device. The following protocols are available when the device acts as a VPN server: PPTP and OpenVPN. Whilst in case RT-N65U is used as a VPN client, the users will be able to get connected to it using the protocols: PPTP, L2TP, and OpenVPN. We detected certain problems upon usage of encrypted tunnels during testing and therefore we passed this information over to the vendor right away. Eventually, these vulnerabilities were completely fixed in 3.0.0.4_374_4230 firmware.
Apart from IPv4 support, the router under review also lets the user establish connections using IPv6. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it permit connections from the WAN to LAN. However, we were pleasantly surprised at the rate of LAN->WAN data flow as we managed to transfer data at the speed of about 900 Mbps.
We also couldn't overlook a possibility of access to the data stored on an external HDD that is connected to the device via USB. When the article was almost done, a new version of the firmware—3.0.0.4.334—appeared on the vendor's website. Among new things that it features is improvement in data access speeds via USB. Naturally, we upgraded the device to the above-mentioned firmware and performed measurements for NTFS once more. The received values are provided under NTFS new range on the diagram presented below.
It's worth mentioning that the access speed to the data stored on an external HDD becomes a key factor that influences the decision of purchase of this or that device. A high speed upon usage of ASUS cloud servers becomes a really sought-after feature since the servers allow for storing of the most important data on the company's servers and accessing them remotely when needed. We already saw similar functionality in certain NASes that we tested earlier and currently the common routers for home use have it too. Also, now users can create their own cloud storage areas and allow certain people access to them. One can access AiCloud settings in ASUS RT-N65U router by entering its LAN interface address using HTTPS.
That's where we draw the testing chapter of ASUS RT-N65U wireless router to a close and move on to summing it all up.
Conclusion
Generally, we are glad about ASUS RT-N65U wireless router we tested. It shows sustainable data transfer speeds and routing speeds in the wireless network segment. Support of ASUS AiCloud provides improved capabilities of its integration with mobile devices as well as facilitates remote access to the data stored on an external HDD.
Among the strength areas of device are the following.
- Support of ASUS AiCloud
- A built-in VPN server (PPTP and OpenVPN)
- High data transmission speeds via IPv6
- Ability to operate in peer networks
- High access speeds to the data which are stored on an external HDD
- Competitive price
Unfortunately, we cannot help to mention several drawbacks.
- Absence of certain device operation modes (repeater and media bridge)
- The web-interface is not completely translated
- Absence of possibility to establish access to the internal network via IPv6
As of when this article was being written, the average price for ASUS RT-N65U in Moscow online shops was 4300 roubles.
