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

Quote from grayman4hire : So would I . Crazy that we still can't even when we're willing to pay a premium price ($150)

I guess we need a 500.00 router

Quote from k-y : Yes, the wireless range/power on the Asus is one of the most noticable improvements over competing routers. Based on the recent $150 price that this router has gone on sale before, you're essentially getting the hard drive for $20.

The FIOS wifi router was the sole reason I purchased this unit. Its wifi range was abysmal. I tried high-gain antennas, mounting the antenna way up in the air, but still 10 ft away in a clear line of sight I lost 1 bar.

The Asus has a fantastic range out of the box, and there are settings to boost the power. I was thinking I'd have to mount it in the middle of my house but even tucked away in my networking closet I get a good signal at my neighbor's next door (houses are pretty close). I don't really use any of the advanced features, but just for the WiFi right now.

Quote from liquidiq : The FIOS wifi router was the sole reason I purchased this unit. Its wifi range was abysmal. I tried high-gain antennas, mounting the antenna way up in the air, but still 10 ft away in a clear line of sight I lost 1 bar. The Asus has a fantastic range out of the box, and there are settings to boost the power. I was thinking I'd have to mount it in the middle of my house but even tucked away in my networking closet I get a good signal at my neighbor's next door (houses are pretty close). I don't really use any of the advanced features, but just for the WiFi right now.

I bought a wndr3300 for 25 bucks years ago. Seeing that a router gets replaced every 5 years or so 150.00 is not a bad investment. However I bought a cisco 3000e for 60.00 thinking it would be better faster and that usb port would enable me to do more than it can.
Meaning I was stupid enuf to think i could hang a drive off the usb and back it up. Wrong..
didnt happen. Range performance were not an issue for me so the 25.00 linksys for my use is fine. If the day comes and range becomes an issue id consider. but if I cant hang a drive off the router and back up my pc's theres no value for my case. So while this might be great for many it might not befor everyone. The 3 cases for my network issues (dropped signals, slow netflix). were solved by 1. changing the router to modem cat5. 2. Removing antivrus 3. bad ip. unplug router modem and shutdown pc wait 5 seconds then plug in modem thenrouter then boot pc.

Broke down and got this. Been waiting forever for this thing to go on sale. Need it badly. You win Asus. Bastards.

Quote from dryu : To a scientist, statements like this are infuriating. You have essentially conducted an experiment with one trial and no control, and wildly extrapolated to an incorrect conclusion. Quality control isn't perfect, and customer service experiences will vary, but you cannot draw correct conclusions from your own singular experience without an idea of the "broader picture."" In layman's language, the statement "my product was defective" does not translate to "every product Asus manufactures is defective"; "I had a bad customer experience with Asus" does not mean that "everyone has a bad customer experience with Asus and also Asus is way worse than every other company." By running without a control sample, I refer to the earlier post that points out that issuing refurbs for warranty claims is a pretty common industry practice; your lack of knowledge about what other companies do has led to your incorrect belief that Asus alone is a deceptive, unworthy company.

Can't say I care if your a scientist or not.. I'm a consumer who buys products. I understand that production cannot guarantee 100% quality However when a product is deeded defective you don't screw the customer and send them a refurbed product, you replace it with a new one (if you buy a new car that's a lemon, would it be okay for them to replace it with a used car, certified or not?). I'm just saying that I don't appreciate companies that deal in that manner and I personally won't buy Asus products again.

Quote from CousinIT : 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.

Talk more about this, you or anyone, if you will. I run a pair of Asus RT-N16 with Toastman Tomato and have avoided other routers that don't run Tomato. Wasn't aware there was a stable build for the N66U yet.

My Asus RT-N16 started going flaky a few months ago, just two or three months beyond the two-year warranty. Fortunately, a handful of 50-cent Nichicon capacitors and some soldering brought it back to life.

Quote from NuNuNYC : This router was going for $129.99 a few times last year. I'm waiting for the RT-AC66U to go for $149.99 again.

This post broke my heart. My gf is moving in with me and I'm quickly finding out that my D-Link 655 ain't gonna hack it when I want to play xbox and she wants to surf the web. I've been looking at these for a few weeks now - time to setup a deal alert.

nice! this will be my 3rd wifi router i got 'from sd'. thanks.

Quote from jwadethack : Can't say I care if your a scientist or not.. I'm a consumer who buys products. I understand that production cannot guarantee 100% quality However when a product is deeded defective you don't screw the customer and send them a refurbed product, you replace it with a new one (if you buy a new car that's a lemon, would it be okay for them to replace it with a used car, certified or not?). I'm just saying that I don't appreciate companies that deal in that manner and I personally won't buy Asus products again.

I guess I can ascertain from your statements that it is based on only products which have actually failed on you, that you will not deal with those companies anymore.

Because if it was based on the warranty in general, 95%+ of those have warranty policies which clearly state they will repair it, replace it with a like item or a newer/new item if discontinued. That means you shouldn't be dealing with most of the companies you purchase from

I don't really know what your griping about on Asus. They continue the warranty on the replacement item for the rest of the length of the original warranty of the item you purchased.

In regard to the lemon law comparison of a $150 piece of electronics, to a $15,000 - $500,000 vehicle, that is an absurd comparison.

Quote from jwadethack : Can't say I care if your a scientist or not.. I'm a consumer who buys products. I understand that production cannot guarantee 100% quality However when a product is deeded defective you don't screw the customer and send them a refurbed product, you replace it with a new one (if you buy a new car that's a lemon, would it be okay for them to replace it with a used car, certified or not?). I'm just saying that I don't appreciate companies that deal in that manner and I personally won't buy Asus products again.

Well, trying to convince you that your reasoning is unscientific and logically unsound is only a small part of my intentions. Mostly, I'm just trying to negate your self-righteous smear campaign against Asus, which I've found to be quite a good company that makes rather good routers. It's a general phenomenon that product ratings, say on Amazon, have two peaks: one representative of the actual product, and a second peak at 0 or 1 from "squeaky wheels" who experienced the small fraction of poor quality products and feel obligated to lambaste the product and the company because they ran into the 0.1% of defective products that passed quality control. Natural human behavior, sure, but also not representative of the product. So, I'm simply arguing that we the informed public should eliminate the bias from the low end of the spectrum by ignoring rants like yours. Bash Asus for its real problems, like the poor Chinese-to-English translations in its manuals and its sometimes unreliable and buggy interfaces, but not for statistical fluctuations in quality control or execution of standard industry practices that you don't like.

Quote from ShIzNiTs : I got the router on craiglist new, opened box for $100! No hard drive of course. Just have to flash it with tomato and test it first which antennas do you recommend?

I used 3 dlink omni directional antennas. For example in my case, I could go outside and get 2 bars with stock antenna. With 3 of these, I got 4 bars at the same location.

Here is the ones I got: http://slickdeals.net/f/5859254-D...pically-24

If someone is looking for a(nother) reason to run TomatoUSB...

[Tutorial - 30 Minutes or Less] Site to Site VPN with TomatoUSB and OpenVPN [qnology.com]

The intent of the tutorial is to provide you with the quickest and least painful step-by-step process for setting up a secure, yet simple Site to Site VPN between two locations, allowing resources to be accessed and shared from both locations.

Client to Site VPN can also easily be added.

All under 30 minutes! Video Proof! http://youtu.be/QsaYzgOIn6w

Can someone school me on why this is $60 better than the RT-N56U model? The RT-N66U has external antennas, I see One is max 300mbps, the other is 450 mbps.

Thanks