Introduction
When representatives of the ASUS company communicated with us and offered to test another wireless repeater, we were ready to receive a small network device that is stuck directly into the socket... However ASUS RP-AC68U model exceeded our even the wildest expectations. In this review we tried to consider not only external design and functional capabilities of the device, but also its performance. RP-AC68U model will be ideally suited for users who need to expand the coverage of the existing high speed wireless network in case of placement of the repeater in a visible place. But first things first!
External design and hardware
The designers who created the RP-AC68U model have tried wonderfully well. In our opinion the case has turned out rather big for an access point, dimensions of 181х106х106, but at the same time looks very nice and unusual.
The name of the model and logo of the vendor are located on the front panel of the repeater. Here it should be noted, one element of the front panel, which is hidden from the eyes of users, is the sensor reacting to a touch: an easy contact allows turning on or off the light of the device.
The upper and side panels are not remarkable, except, perhaps, the built-in light.
Five Gigabit Ethernet ports, USB 3.0 port, LEDs indicating operating of the wireless modules, power slot with and ON/OFF button, the WPS button and two stickers with brief information about the device are located on the rear side of the case.
On the bottom side there are four rubber legs, ventilation grate, as well as Reset button to reset the user configuration.
Now let's have a look at the insides of the device.
The hardware platform of ASUS RP-AC68U model is represented by two green textolite plates: the motherboard and the wireless module. The system is based on SoC processor Realtek RTL8198C, DDR2 module ESMT M15F2G16128A of 256 Mbytes serves as RAM. Flash memory is presented by microchip ESMT F59L1G81LA with the capacity of 128 Mbytes.
Two chips Realtek RTL8814AR and RTL8194AR, responsible for the wireless network, are located on the second plate.
That's where we proceed to completion of the review about the hardware of the repeater and access point and pass directly on to studying software capabilities of the device.
Firmware upgrade
Firmware upgrade is carried out in Firmware Upgrade tab, Administration menu item. The firmware upgrade process may be carried out both in the manual and semi-automatic modes.
Regardless of the mode chosen any specific technical proficiency will not be required from the user. The whole process takes about three minutes (not considering the time necessary for downloading the firmware file from the vendor servers).
One can make sure that the upgrade procedure has been performed successfully by looking at any page in the web interface, at the top of which the current firmware version will be shown.
In case of a failure during the firmware upgrade process, the vendor suggests to use the utility Firmware Restoration by means of which it is possible to find the devices which are in the recovery mode and to recover on them the firmware in semi-automatic mode.
Now let’s see what the device web-interface features.
Web-interface
Any current browser can be used for access to the web-interface of the ASUS RP-AC68U model. It is necessary to enter login and password.
Right after entering correct credentials, the user is navigated to the homepage of the device, which displays the brief information about the device status: operation mode, number of connected clients, wireless module settings, current firmware, etc.
In the System Status item located on the right side of the page, not only the basic settings of the wireless module are presented, but also CPU and RAM load of the whole device.
In addition to the data above, this element can contain information about wired and wireless clients of the device, global network connection status, as well as the presence of external USB-devices.
USB Application menu item lets the user set up RP-AC68U for operation with the connected USB-device. Currently supports the following device types: external hard disks or flash drives with USB interface, as well as printers.
The USB-attached storage device can be used not only for storage of files and providing access to them to devices on the LAN. AiCloud 2.0 menu item allows setting up remote access to the information placed on the external drive. Besides, AiCloud function allows executing data synchronization with another network device of the ASUS company. Shall admit, it was the first time we saw USB port in an access point/repeater of this vendor. And also we have not met before the dual-core processor in the devices of such a class.
Tabs of the Wireless menu item are traditional for the ASUS wireless equipment.
The only tab of LAN menu item lets one specify the IP parameters of the device.
The model under review ASUS RP-AC68U can operate in one of three main modes: Repeater, Access Point, Media Bridge. Modes Express Way 2.4 GHz and Express Way 5 GHz in essence execute the repeater function, but repeatable signal is only transmitted to a different frequency range.
System tab of the same menu item allows one to change user name and password, to select time zone, to enable or disable access through telnet and HTTPS protocols.
System log menu item tabs contain log information as about operation of the entire device as a whole, and its wireless module in particular.
By using Network Tools menu item tabs one can check operability of a network, view the list of the current connections, as well as make remote waking up of the computer on the LAN.
Here, perhaps, it is worth noting that during operation of RP-AC68U in other modes, the model web-interface slightly changes.
That is where we bring the review of the device web-interface capabilities to a conclusion and move on to the command line review.
Command line
Enabling and disabling the access to the ASUS RP-AC68U command line is performed using System tab, Administration menu item in the web-interface. As of when this review was being written, the connection through the SSH protocol was not supported.
In order to access the command line one must use the same log-on information as for the connection to the device web-interface. Firmware of ASUS RP-AC68U access point is built on Linux 3.10.24 OS using Busy Box 1.17.4.
RP-AC68U login: admin
Password:
ASUSWRT RP-AC68U_3.0.0.4 Mon Nov 16 07:43:52 UTC 2015
admin@RP-AC68U:/tmp/home/root# cd /
admin@RP-AC68U:/# uname -a
Linux RP-AC68U 3.10.24 #4 Mon Nov 16 15:44:26 CST 2015 mips GNU/Linux
admin@RP-AC68U:/# busybox
BusyBox v1.17.4 (2015-11-16 15:43:50 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, 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, grep, gunzip, gzip, head, ifconfig, insmod, ionice, kill, killall, klogd, less,
ln, logger, login, ls, lsmod, lsusb, md5sum, mdev, mkdir, mke2fs, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.ext3, mknod, mkswap,
modprobe, more, mount, mv, netstat, nice, nohup, nslookup, pidof, ping, printf, ps, pwd, readlink, renice, rm,
rmdir, rmmod, route, sed, setconsole, sh, sleep, sort, strings, swapoff, swapon, sync, syslogd, tail, tar,
telnetd, test, top, touch, tr, traceroute, true, tune2fs, udhcpc, umount, uname, unzip, uptime, usleep,
vconfig, vi, watch, wc, which, zcat, zcip
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. We decided to put the output of both commands in a separate file. Also contents of /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, and /usr/sbin catalogs are located in a separate file.
Now let's turn to /proc catalogue to view its files 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@RP-AC68U:/# cd /proc/
admin@RP-AC68U:/proc# ls
1 315 crypto net
10 34 custom_Passthru pagetypeinfo
11 35 custom_Passthru_wlan partitions
12 36 devices peth0
13 37 diskstats phyPower
134 38 driver phyRegTest
138 39 eee pptp_conn_ck
14 4 enable_dos qos
15 40 eth0 rtk_vlan_management_entry
158 41 eth1 rtk_vlan_support
16 42 eth2 rtl865x
162 43 eth3 rtl_dnstrap
164 44 eth4 sched_debug
17 47 eth7 scsi
18 5 execdomains self
19 50 fast_l2tp softirqs
2 6 fast_nat stat
20 61 fast_pppoe sys
21 619 fast_pptp sysvipc
214 7 filesystems timer_list
216 8 filter_table tty
22 821 fs uptime
224 822 gpio usb
227 9 hw_nat version
23 StormCtrl igmp_proxy_wan_dev vmallocinfo
233 alg interrupts vmstat
236 asus_ate iomem watchdog_kick
242 br_igmpDb ioports watchdog_reboot
245 br_igmpProxy irq watchdog_start
246 br_igmpQuerierInfo kallsyms wl0
247 br_igmpVersion kcore wl0-vxd
248 br_igmpquery kmsg wl0.0
249 br_igmpsnoop kpagecount wl0.1
250 br_mCastFastFwd kpageflags wl0.2
253 br_mldQuerierInfo load_default wl0.3
257 br_mldVersion loadavg wl1
268 br_mldquery locks wl1-vxd
276 br_mldsnoop meminfo wl1.0
278 buddyinfo misc wl1.1
280 bus modules wl1.2
3 cmdline mounts wl1.3
313 consoles mtd yaffs
314 cpuinfo nandinfo zoneinfo
admin@RP-AC68U:/proc# cat uptime
2477.82 4895.50
admin@RP-AC68U:/proc# cat loadavg
0.05 0.12 0.13 1/68 824
admin@RP-AC68U:/proc# cat cpuinfo
system type : Sheipa Platform
machine : Unknown
processor : 0
cpu model : MIPS 1074Kc V2.4
BogoMIPS : 498.89
wait instruction : yes
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 64
extra interrupt vector : yes
hardware watchpoint : no
isa : mips32r2
ASEs implemented : mips16
shadow register sets : 1
kscratch registers : 0
core : 0
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
processor : 1
cpu model : MIPS 1074Kc V2.4
BogoMIPS : 498.89
wait instruction : yes
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 64
extra interrupt vector : yes
hardware watchpoint : no
isa : mips32r2
ASEs implemented : mips16
shadow register sets : 1
kscratch registers : 0
core : 0
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
admin@RP-AC68U:/proc# uptime
03:41:35 up 41 min, load average: 0.04, 0.11, 0.12
We can't help but mention nvram utility that allows changing certain important device operation parameters.
admin@RP-AC68U:/# nvram
usage: nvram [get name] [set name=value] [unset name] [show] [save file] [restore file]
admin@RP-AC68U:/# nvram show | grep admin
size: 19906 bytes (41534 left)
admin@RP-AC68U:/# nvram show | grep password
size: 19906 bytes (41534 left)
http_passwd=password
acc_list=admin>password
admin@RP-AC68U:/# nvram show | grep http_username
size: 19906 bytes (41534 left)
http_username=admin
That's where we proceed to completion of the brief review of the command line interface capabilities of the device and pass directly on to its testing.
Testing
The first testing procedure we usually 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. Wireless repeater and access point ASUS RP-AC68U boots in 70 seconds. We consider this result normal.
The second test, which was no less traditional, became a security scanning procedure, which has been carried out using Positive Technologies XSpider 7.8 network security scanner. On the whole, there were eighteen open ports discovered. The most interesting data are presented below. Naturally, we have reported about the found vulnerabilities to the vendor. Technical specialists of the vendor have notified us that the found vulnerabilities (and even some other) are already fixed in current versions of the firmware. Then we asked for an explanation to the XSpider utility producers. It has become clear that detection of suspicions on vulnerability is made according to the version reported by the system in a banner, no other checks are made at the same time. Thus, the RP-AC68U model is free from the vulnerabilities listed below.
Before getting down to performance tests we would like to get our readers familiar with the key specifications of the test stand we used.
| Component | PC | Notebook |
| Motherboard | ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme | ASUS M60J |
| CPU | Intel Core i7 6700K 4 GHz | Intel Core i7 720QM 1.6 GHz |
| RAM | DDR4-2133 Samsung 64 Gbytes | DDR3 PC3-10700 SEC 16 Gbytes |
| NIC | Intel PRO/1000 PT ASUS PCE-AC68 |
Atheros AR8131 ASUS RT-AC88U |
| OS | Windows 7 x64 SP1 Rus | Windows 7 x64 SP1 Rus |
We decided to begin the performance tests with measuring device performance upon operation in the access point mode. ASUS PCE-AC68 wireless NIC was used as the client. JPerf utility, 2.0.2 version, was used for tests with 1, 5, and 15 concurrent TCP connections in both frequency ranges.
Then we decided to find out throughput of the device under test in the Media Bridge mode, which is very similar to the wireless client mode. The operation of the wireless network was provided by the ASUS RT-AC88U router, which is also on testing in our laboratory.
One more operation mode of ASUS RP-AC68U which drew our attention, is the wireless repeater. We built a network on the basis of the wireless router ASUS RT-AC88U, functions of the wireless client were undertaken by the NIC ASUS PCE-AC68.
Since ASUS RP-AC68U has USB 3.0 port, we couldn't but test the performance of the device with external drives, connected to this interface. For testing we used our standard external SSD drive Transcend TS256GESD400K 256 Gbytes. To our surprise, we were able to measure only two file systems (NTFS and FAT32) while connected in USB 2.0 mode. Operation in USB 3.0 mode or with other file systems was extremely unstable and led either to the impossibility of recording to an external device or to reboot RP-AC68U. Naturally, we reported about it to the vendor, and we hope that this problem will be fixed in the next firmware. As of when this article was being written, the following file systems were officially supported: NTFS, HFS+ and FAT32.
That's where we draw the testing chapter to a close and move on to summing it all up.
Summary
After testing the wireless repeater and access point ASUS RP-AC68U we were left with mixed feelings. On the one hand, we liked the design solution used in the model, as well as the resulting wireless performance; but on the other hand, the current version of the firmware seems slightly unfinished.
The strength areas are presented below.
- High wireless speeds
- The presence of the dual-core processor
- Futuristic design
- The presence of five Gigabit Ethernet ports
- Support of several operation modes
- Support of both frequency ranges
- The presence of the signal power indicator on the case.
Unfortunately, we cannot help but mention drawbacks we have discovered.
- Unstable work with USB-drives
- The web-interface is not completely translated.
As of when this review was being written, the repeater ASUS RP-AC68U wasn’t sold in Russia, that’s why it is too early to speak about the price.
