ASUS RT-AC68P AC-1900 Wireless Router Review

Introduction
When beginning to think about purchasing new wireless networking for your home or small office, you may not associate Asus with the other top selling brands such as Netgear or Linksys. Asus however has made a big leap in their wireless technology over the years and is quickly becoming a more household wireless networking name. With their specifications similar or beating competitors and with their reliability factor along with longer warranties, you can easily see why they are now competing with the likes of Linksys and Netgear.

Today we are going to take a look at one of their 802.11AC routers, the AC1900 or referred to as the Asus RT-AC68P. This is their middle of the road router in terms of performance but will not hit the bank hard and should give excellent performance, especially on the 5GHz band. The feature set is also loaded with built-in USB 3.0 ports, cloud technology for synchronization and sharing, as well as a special MIMO antenna design made to give great performance.

Specifications

Let’s first take a look at the factory specifications to get a good idea of what the features are and what Asus seems to thinks important to the consumer.

• Network Standard
  IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11n, IEEE 802.11ac, IPv4, IPv6
• Product Segment
  AC1900 ultimate AC performance: 600+1300Mbps
• Data Rate
  802.11a : 6,9,12,18,24,36,48,54Mbps
  802.11b : 1, 2, 5.5, 11Mbps
  802.11g : 6,9,12,18,24,36,48,54Mbps
  802.11n : up to 600Mbps
  802.11ac: up to 1300Mbps
• Antenna
  External antenna x 3
• Operating Frequency
  2.4GHz/5GHz
• Encryption
  64-bit WEP, 128-bit WEP, WPA2-PSK, WPA-PSK, WPA-Enterprise , WPA2-Enterprise , WPS support
• Firewall & Access Control
  Firewall: SPI intrusion detection,DoS protection
  Access control: Parental control, Network service filter, URL filter, Port filter
• Management
  UPnP, DLNA, IGMP v1/v2/v3, DNS Proxy, DHCP, NTP Client, DDNS, Port Triger, Universal Repeater, System Event Log
• VPN Support
  IPSec Pass-Throuth
  PPTP Pass-Through
  L2TP Pass-Through
  PPTP server
• WAN Connection Type
  Internet connection type : Automatic IP, Static IP, PPPoE(MPPE supported), PPTP, L2TP
  WAN Bridge support
  Multicast Proxy support
  Multicast Rate Setting support
• Utilities
  ．Download master
  – support BT, NZB, HTTP, ED2K
  – support encryption, DHT, PEX and magnet link
  – upload and download bandwidth control
  – download scheduling
  ．Media server:
  – Image: JPEG
  – Audio: mp3, wma, wav, pcm, mp4, lpcm, ogg
  – Video: asf, avi, divx, mpeg, mpg, ts, vob, wmv, mkv, mov
  ．QoS:
  – WMM
  – User definable rules for IP/MAC/Port. Upload and Download bandwidth management.
  – ACK/SYN/FIN/RST/ICMP with Highest priority
  ．Guest Network
  – 2.4GHz guest network x 3, 5GHz guest network x 3
  ．Printer Server: multifunctional printer support(Windows nly), LPR protocol support
  ．File server: Samba and FTP server with account management
  ．PPTP VPN server
  ．Network map
  ．Traffic monitor
• Ports
  4 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for LAN, 1 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for WAN
  USB 2.0 x 1
  USB 3.0 x 1
• Button
  WPS Button, Reset Button, Power Button, Wireless on/off Button
• LED Indicator
  PWR x 1
  AIR x 2
  LAN x 4
  WAN x 1
  USB x 2
• Power Supply
  AC Input : 110V~240V(50~60Hz)
  DC Output : 19 V with max. 1.75 A current
• OS Support
  Windows® 8.1 86×64
  Windows® 8 86×64
  Windows® 7 86×64
  Windows® Vista 86×64
  Windows® 2000 86×64
  Windows® ME
  Windows® XP 86×64
  Windows® Server 2003
  Windows® Server 2008
  Mac OS X
  Mac OS X 10.1
  Mac OS X 10.4
  Mac OS X 10.5
  Mac OS X 10.6
  Mac OS X 10.7
  Mac OS X 10.8
  Linux Kernel (Support Ubuntu only)
  Linux
• Dimensions
  8.66 x 3.26 x 6.3 inch (WxDxH)
• Weight
  1.4 lb
• Package Content
  1 x RT-AC68U Wireless-AC1900 Dual Band Gigabit Router
  1 x RJ-45 cable
  1 x Power adapter
  1 x QSG
  1 x Support CD(user manual and ultility)
• Router Special Features
  3G/4G data sharing, AiCloud, Printer server, Download Master, AiDisK, Multiple SSIDs, Parental Control