Linksys AE1000

The Linksys (Cisco) AE1000 adapter is a USB, N adapter that is in the highest purchasing tier for this model series. When I bought it, it was one of the most expensive adapters on the market. This adapter can operate on on a/b/g and n frequencies with a decent range, in my office I get great reception from over a hundred feet away. I matched the adapter with a Linksys E2000 N router. Below I will detail the pros and cons for this duo.

The AE 1000 was easy to install, you can get away with copying the driver files over and ditching the setup software. I will say though, after a few months of having adapter issues (ie wifi not connecting on wake/intermittent connectivity) I found that disabling power suspend on the usb port allowed the adapter to stay away even in sleep. This stopped the driver from corrupting and the service from crashing after wake up. As mentioned before, I paired this high end adapter with its high end equal router - the E2000 N.

I didnt want to get into the review of the E2000 but I must tell you it is an easy pairing, similar to what a person would purchase at a store. This router has internal intenneas that use both 2.4 and 5 ghz bands. The only problem is that the bands are not simultaneous. You must either choose 2.4 or 5 ghz, which can become a problem if you have devices that cant accept 5 and some that can. See my review on the ASUS router for a good alternative.

Back to the adapter. After fixing these problems and seeing its performance, I think its a solid piece of geek horsepower. For the price, I think one can find a similar product that delivers almost the same performance. If you are planning on going long range, even though this router has performed great at 100 plus feet, look at installable PCI adapters.

Geek Shaun, signing off.

ASUS RT-AC66U Review

I had the pleasure of using this beast today and was skeptical when my client sent it to me for my opinion. This router packs a punch when it comes to features, such as using an external drive on the router (NAS functionality) and ASUS's in house cloud software (haven't tried this out - my laptop had it installed as well). Post a comment if you've used it, more than happy to hear any feedback.

As far as negative reviews go, it seems that the ASUS RT-AC66U can be a little glitchy unless you update the firmware, after that people are saying this clears up all the problems. After setting it up I immediately updated the firmware, no problems. The interface is impeccable, gives you all the options without the garbage that its competition has. I was easily able to set up port forwarding, and my favorite feature - Simultaneous 2.4 and 5 ghz bands! I purchased a Cisco (Linksys) E2000 N router about a year ago that is one or the other, some of my devices cant connect to 5 so I am constantly switching back and forth, NOT WITH THIS THING!

I was also surprised to see how little marketing effort have been made to get this point across. Not all new N routers have the capability of running both bands at the same time and delegating independent SSID's to each.

Looks

This is one of the first ac type routers to have external antennas, it has a great range and will plow through almost anything in the way (rock/plaster/etc(. When both bands are active the range is substantially increased. The router is a nice dark grey with blue LED's, smokin' hot. Its also slim which is a little strange for most N routers, low profile look makes it a perfect edition to what I like to call, geek furniture.

UI - Tip

When you connect to the router for the first time wirelessly you can set it up, contrary to what other online reviews are saying. Even if you are starting it up for the first time, you can bypass the wizard if your internet isn't connected - you have to play around with it in order to get out of the setup screen.

Overall this router is all that and a bag of computer chips. The only thing I could see holding me back from buying is the $180 (on the low end) price tag. You do get every dollar out of it and though ASUS isn't a typical network component industry leader, I have a feeling they could be taking a BIG market share in the near future.