ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router + 500GB Western Digital Elements USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive $170 + Free Shipping

I got this router on Black Friday for $129.99, so here are a few responses based on two months of experience:


I've been a DD-WRT person up until this router, but the Asus firmware has improved to the point where the benefits from 3rd party firmware are not worth the effort. The Asus stock firmware does in fact have QOS and Access Restrictions, in addition to quite a lot of other features like a media/DLNA server, FTP access to attached storage, and a minimal cloud storage system. One worthwhile 3rd party alternative is Asuswrt-Merlin, which is an enhanced version of Asus's firmware maintained by some dude with too much free time.

This router uses DD-WRT as its firmware and includes QOS, Access Restrictions, and much more without the hassle of needing to reflash the firmware and pray you don't brick your router. I've used DD-WRT for many years on a WRT-54GL then finally took the plunge on the RT-N65 a couple months ago as the bandwidth consumed in my house has increased drastically as the kids have gotten older and the old router just couldn't keep up. The rock solid stability and features available in DD-WRT were one of the main reasons I went with the router I did. Nothing at all against Tomato as it too is an extremely stable and feature packed firmware that is a far cry better than what is normally available on an out of box consumer grade router, but in this case the reflash risk/reward is not warranted IMHO.

Not bad, but fail to see how this justifies FP.

Unless you really want a 500gb external drive -- and does anyone really? -- I'd rather buy the "replacement" model for this, the AS-RTAC66U, for $178 right now at superbiiz. And that is not actually that good of a price for that, a better router than this.

What kind of QoS features does this router have? Can I allot bandwidth limits to each device? My E4200V2 (refurb and within the 30 day return period) has QoS, but only allows me to set priority of devices when simultaneously in use. I want to limit bandwidth to certain devices (such as my iPad and iPhone) that do not require such high speeds regardless of whether or not there are other devices actively consuming bandwidth at any given time.

Not bad, but fail to see how this justifies FP.

Unless you really want a 500gb external drive -- and does anyone really? -- I'd rather buy the "replacement" model for this, the AS-RTAC66U, for $178 right now at superbiiz. And that is not actually that good of a price for that, a better router than this.

If you don't mind refurb, Amazon resellers are selling this for $120 shipped

I would stay away from an AC router right now. The specs are still years away from ratification and just like occurred with the people buying some draft-n models, you may end up paying early adopter prices for a device that functions far less than optimal, or not at all, when the spec is finally certified as there is no guarantee of interoperability between devices until this occurs.

I've been utilizing the dual band on a 66U the past few months with Shibby Tomato 1.28

1.28.0000 MIPSR2-104 K26 USB BT-VPN-64K

Absolutely flawless.