The IT Nerd

Routers of a high performance nature are starting to pop up everywhere as home users don’t simply want to be able to surf the net. They want to stream Netflix, or play Call Of Duty, sometimes both at the same time. One of the top contenders for the title of fastest router around is the Asus RT-AC3200. Right out of the box, it has a couple of unique features. Starting with the fact that it is billed as a tri-band router. To be more specific, it has one 2.4 GHz band to support 802.11n/g/b Wi-Fi clients at a maximum speed of 600Mbps. Plus it has two 5 GHz bands to support 802.11ac/n/a clients, capped at 1,300Mbps for each band. That way you can put slower devices on one 5 GHz band and faster devices on the other. Because each band operates as fast as the slowest device, you get faster throughput. Or you can separate your Apple TV from your Xbox One so that everyone is happy.

There’s other things that this router has going for it:

It has six antennas. The most I’ve seen on a router. That helps with range as it easily covered my 850 square foot condo.

It has not one but two USB ports. One up front as pictured above which is USB 3.0 and another in the back which is USB 2.0. To me that’s a little backward as you’d want this reversed so that if you want to use the USB 3.0 port for fast storage in the form of a USB 3.0 hard drive, you could without having cables at the front of the router. One thing that I should point out to Mac users is if you do use a hard drive with this router, it supports Time Machine perfectly.

The other thing to note is that this router is BIG. But despite the size, you get the usual WAN port for your cable/DSL modem and for gigabit ethernet ports. Personally, if they added a fifth or even a sixth ethernet port, they really could have made themselves stand out as they have room to do so.

The setup is trivially easy. All you have to do is plug the router in and point a browser from a connected computer to the router’s default IP address of 192.168.1.1. The first time, the interface will greet you with a Web-based wizard, which walks you through a few steps, including creating a password for the interface itself and the Wi-Fi networks. If you want to create separate 2.4 GHz and 5GHz bands, you’ll have to do some extra work after that. Or you can leave the router’s SmartConnect feature turned on which presents you with a single network (as opposed to three of them) and does the hard work for you.

Four other things stand out for me:

• This router has built in anti-virus in the form of AiProtection which is powered by Trend Micro. It is designed to protect the entire home network against viruses and malware from the Internet. Furthermore, if a client has already been infected, this feature will also stop it from sending out personal information.
• Adaptive QoS prioritizes the Internet bandwidth according to the type of traffic on the fly. In my tests, it appeared to work quite well.
• There’s a function called “apps analysis” that allows for real-time monitoring of the Internet activity of any connected client as well as the total download and upload bandwidth being used.
• It has a built-in PPTP VPN server that can host up to 10 remote clients and can even turn one of its LAN ports into a second WAN port in case you want to use the router with two Internet services (DSL and Cable) at the same time.

In terms of wireless speed, it matched the Linksys WRT1900 AC which is another router that plays in this rarefied air in terms of download and upload speed. The same is true for the range of the router. But the extra features such as the VPN server amongst others push the RT-AC3200 to the head of the class. If you’re a small office/home office or a person who has the need for a router to support high bandwidth activities, this is the router for you. The only thing that may stop you from getting this router is the price. It’s $299 USD which is at the top end of what routers go for. But given what you get for that money, I would say it’s worth it. If you want a router that will support your high bandwidth needs and you’re willing to pay top dollar for it, the Asus RT-AC3200 should merit a good look.

This entry was posted on April 9, 2015 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Products with tags Asus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.