Replaced Netgear Router with Asus Router

So my Netgear N900 has just simply caused me so much trouble that I have had enough, it would randomly drop all Wi-fi connections about 2x per day and I was forced to reboot the router twice a day or three times a day just to maintain connectivity for all my Wi-fi devices.  I tried updating the firmware, and every other tweak I could find online and it would just work for 4 hours fine, then boom all devices couldn’t connect o Wi-Fi and it would never recover without a reboot.

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So I decided to try the ASUS RT-N56U which I have read many great reviews on, though they did have a big security vulnerability exploited and patched in February I was aware of this and still chose to buy the router besides the point as many other router models were also vulnerable and it had already been patched.

The ASUS RT-N56U actually has the most four and five star reviews out of any other router listed on NewEgg and happened to be on sale for less than $90, so this was 1/2 the price of the latest Linksys EA6500 when I bought it so I decided to pick it up and see if it would be more stable than the Netgear N900.

The setup was a breeze, and was even able to be done all over Wi-Fi without requiring you to have an Ethernet cable plugged in to configure it first.  The guide walks you through the setup pretty easily, which involves you hitting the router, establishing it to your Internet, setting up your SSID and 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wireless bands.  It allows you to quickly set either auto for DNS, or put static DNS entries in which I typically will use Google DNS entries of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as my DNS since they tend to be faster than my ISP DNS.  I did use OpenDNS prior but they blacklisted a few email providers that I use, so I had to switch to Google DNS.

So far it has only been a few days, but it is looking pretty good for the ASUS RT-N56U and I will say it is about 40% of the size of the Netgear N900 so it takes up way less room on a shelf.

By the way, if you need to find the latest firmware for the ASUS RT-N56U you can get it here, you won’t find it in the auto-update of the router http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&m=rt-n56u

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