Introduction
Source:
VORTEZ
Product on Review: Asus
RT-N13U Wireless Router
Manufacturer: Asus
Home networking has taken a giant leap over the past few years as more of us
are using computers within the household. Building a network in the home can
have some great benefits.
The best place to start building any network is at the router, as this will
govern how and where the signals are sent. A router basically does all the hard
work for you whilst you can enjoy sharing resources.
Now when faced with buying a router, there are some typical brands out there
that will almost always be aligned with home networking. Names such as Netgear,
D-Link and Linksys. But today we have an offering from Asus, a manufacturer
that has expanded into many departments over the last decade. You would
typically find Asus under other sections such as Monitors, optical drives,
graphics cards and of course motherboards where they have a solid reputation
for being market leaders, so today it comes as a nice surprise for me to be
reviewing one of their routers. If previous products are anything to go by,
this their latest wireless router will be a great performer.
Asus have this to say about the RT-N13U:
The ASUS RT-N13U wireless router is the latest in the line of quality routers
from ASUS that aims to provide users with a host of easy-to-use wireless
features. Among them, the EZ UI lets users set up and manage wireless
connections, printers, and scanners with exceptional ease. It also facilitates
troubleshooting, sharing of multimedia content and documents, as well as the
allocation of bandwidth to different activities based on user preferences. With
more wireless connectivity options, the ASUS RT-N13U can also support 24/7
downloads—even when the PC is turned off. It is also a stylish performer that
complements any home or office with its clean design and hidden internal
antenna.
So without any further delay let us look at the Asus RT-N13U…
Features and Specifications
The Asus RT-N13U comes with a host of
features. Throughout each of these features the one thing that Asus set out to
achieve is to ensure the end user can perform various tasks with ease. Below
are the features that the RT-N13U boasts. (taken from Asus.
Configure an All-in-one Printer Easily with EZ UI
The ASUS RT-N13U wireless router features EZ UI, a powerful graphical user
interface that provides intuitive setup and easy management of printers and
other networked resources. It features a suite of innovative connectivity
solutions including EZ All-in-One Printer, QIS, Ai Disk, Dr. Surf, EZ QoS, and
Network Map.
EZ All-in-One Printer allows multiple users to share printers and scanners
without a dedicated server managing the process. It increases office efficiency
by handling multiple printing requests simultaneously. Additionally, convenient
scanning can be done on the printers with auto-installation of drivers. No
loading of additional programs is required. For easy configuration, EZ
All-in-One Printer supports and detects all the major printer brands on the
market.
QIS (Quick Internet Setup) facilitates device connection to the Internet in
three easy steps. With Ai Disk, users can easily set up a file-sharing server
at home in three simple steps. Dr. Surf offers real-time diagnostics for rapid
troubleshooting. EZ QoS lets users easily prioritize application bandwidth for
an optimal experience. Network Map provides a complete overview of network
status for easy monitoring.
Set Up Effortlessly with EZ Switch
For more advanced users, the ASUS RT-N13U features the exclusive EZ switch with
three modes to meet various wireless network requirements. If a user wants to
set up an ADSL network at home, they can set the EZ Switch to router mode,
whereas if they want to use wireless connectivity, the EZ Switch can be set to
repeater mode. Lastly, if the user has another router at home, they may choose
the AP mode, which allows them to share the network.
Internal Antenna—A Stylishly Well-received Connection
Another innovative feature of the ASUS RT-N13U is its design. It features an
internal antenna, which provides wider coverage than an external antenna.
Furthermore, with an optimized antenna isolation configuration, users can get
even better connectivity, as well as extremely clear reception for the best
performance with minimal adjustments. Finally, with a clean and minimalist
exterior, the ASUS RT-N13U is a stylish and contemporary addition to any home.
ASUS RT-N13U
The RT-N13U Wireless Router comes presented
in a nice little blue and white box. On the box are the highlighted features,
the one to engage your full attention is the text saying that this router comes
with a built in print server. We will be taking a look into these features as
we progress through the review. On the rear of the box there is a more detailed
explanation with diagrams of how these features actually work.
Opening the box up reveals the contents – User manual guide, warranty card,
installation CD, CAT5 cable, power adaptor, and the RT-N13U itself.
Taking the RT-N13U out of the box, this
wireless router really does look the part. It’s bright white finish will look
great on the desk. It stands upright which is the opposite of how most routers
would usually sit. Unfortunately there isn’t a way of lying this router flat,
but this shouldn’t be a problem. Observing the front we have various lights.
These are (from top to bottom):
- 4 LAN indicators - if a computer is plugged into port 1, this will light up
blue
- Internet indicator - if you have your internet cable plugged in at the back
this will light up blue
- Wireless indicator – this will light up blue if a wireless connection is
present
- Power indicator – this will light up blue if there is power to the unit
- WPS – this will launch the wireless protection setup.
Focussing our attention on the rear of the router is (from top to bottom):
- USB 2.0 connector – this is for plugging in printer or USB dongle/HDD for FTP
storage
- 4 LAN ports – allowing you to connect up to 4 workstations
- 1 Internet (Ethernet) port – this is for obtaining your internet connection
(this router is not internet ready)
- Power socket – here the power adaptor is plugged into
On the underside of the RT-N13U are some other buttons. There is a hard reset
button that will restore your router to factory defaults if you happen to lock
yourself out of the admin panel or simply want to return all settings to
default status. There is also another button that allows you to switch into 3
different operation modes – Router, Repeater and AP (Access Point). There is
also some information such as the default username and password and SSID for
this router should you not realise what these are. As a good practise you
should always change the username and password prior to logging in to prevent
unauthorised access and misuse.
 |
| Note the PIN Code printed on the tag |
The unit looks and feels sturdy. All of the buttons, and features from the
outside are easy to use and see. In the next section we will see how easy this
router is to configure and get going. Looking at the assortment of features and
seeing how easy they are to get along with.
Configuration
To test the RT-N13U I will be using a Dell
D630 laptop and a desktop computer. These will be later used to transfer files
so that we can observe the speeds at which data is transferred.
Setting up the router I started by inserting the CD into the optical drive, the
wizard automatically loads up and presents you with a screen asking you what
you would like to install. I chose to “Install ASUS Wireless Router Utilities”.
To access the admin panel so that I can configure any settings was easy. I just
opened up a web browser and typed in the IP address on the underside of the
router: 192.168.1.1 this then took me to a secure login, I typed in admin and
admin for the username and password. After hitting ok I was presented with the
following screen:
This gave me a detailed summary of how my current network looks. To the right
hand side the settings that I setup with the wizard earlier are there.
Including the SSID and Passphrase. I must say that the interface looks great
and is easy navigated. It’s not hard to find your way around and even if you do
have trouble setting up your network the DR. Surf in the top right hand section
of the admin panel will give you hints such as “The Ethernet cable is not
plugged in” so that you can quickly sort out any problems.
Under the Operations Mode tab you are presented with the 3 modes, Router,
Repeater or AP. This is to be used in conjunction with the buttons on the
underside of the router that I mentioned earlier. For each that you click on
you can see a diagram, giving you a clear picture of how a network would look
like. Very helpful.
We will skip the AiDISK and look at this in the next section. So the next
feature to engage our attention is the EzQOS Bandwidth Management. In this
section we can manage how much bandwidth is used for certain operations under
particular protocols. For example. We can assign higher priority to gaming and
internet applications and lesser priority to FTP. This is a clever feature and
surely very useful if you share the router with others and you wish to control
bandwidth usage easier.
The advanced tab in the admin panel gives you many avenues and controls. I
won’t go any further with screenshots but as you can see from the advanced tab
screenshot there are a huge amount of options there that advanced users can
take advantage of.
AiDISK and other features
Now we come to one of my favourite features
of the Asus RT-N13U. The AiDisk is a feature that allows you to create an FTP
server along-side your router. By plugging in a USB device such as a pen drive
or external HDD and following the wizard you can create a domain and access
files when you are away from home. All you need to make sure is that the router
is switched on, there is no need for your computer to be switched on. This
makes accessing those necessary files possible and without the need to mess
about with getting others at home to switch on the computer and send files. The
wizard will take literally only take a moment to complete and within minutes
you can have your FTP server setup. A truly amazing feature, 24/7 access to
your files – wherever, whenever. Below is each stage of the wizard.
Print Server
The print server is also a very hand feature that can be setup in minutes. All
you have to do is plug the USB lead into the back of the router, launch the
print server installation from off the Asus CD and away you go. This is
particularly useful for me as I do not have a printer installed on any of my
computers; the printer is installed on another machine in the house. Every time
I need to print I need to switch this computer on. This feature takes away that
need, I can simply have the printer plugged into the RT-N13U wireless router
and the printer is now accessible. Superb!
Download Master
Yet another feature – it seems that the Asus RT-N13U is loaded with helpful
features. This last feature that I will be commenting on is a very handy one.
It allows you to drag and drop .torrent files into a download manager. Not only
does this allow for these types of files but also HTTP and FTP.
Conclusion
Although my analysis of the Asus RT-N13U
has been quite thorough I thought it was necessary to post some kind of graph
to show roughly what transfer rates are like. So for this test I simply
transferred a 14.5MB MP3 file from my desktop machine that was wired into
RT-N13U over wireless to a laptop on the network (download). Once this file had
been transferred, I then sent the file back to the desktop machine (upload) and
observed both transfer by timing using a stopwatch. Below are the results.
To conclude then, the Asus RT-N13U is a fantastic wireless router that is quite
literally all singing all dancing. It comes with a multitude of features that
will suite most people’s needs and what’s so likeable about this product is
that you won’t have to spend hours of time setting things up. The interface is
easy to understand, and if you do get stuck DR. Surf is sure to help out and
point you in the right direction!
I can’t fault this router at all, it comes in at around the £55 ($89 / €60)
mark which is very competitive for a 300Mbps Wireless N router. Consider the
support and features included in this package and you are onto a winner. A very
versatile product indeed.
The only downside that I can see with the RT-N13U is that it only has one USB,
if I want to host my files and use a print server I cannot do this. It’s one or
the other. So to take advantage of both these features, we really need to see
two USB ports.
Pros
+ Easy to setup
+ Many useful features
+ Affordable
+ Very versatile – use as a router, repeater or AP
+ Access your files wherever, whenever
Cons
- Only one USB port
