Performance Under the New Regime

If you've been following my recent adventures in networking you know that I recently transitioned over to an entirely new router from a new vendor. Some of the things that Asus emphasized with this unit was speed and range. Both were important to me since I'm running on a FiOS connection that provides 75Mb downstream and 35Mb upstream. I certainly want to be able to use as much of that pipe as I can.

It's text book that if you want to see the results of a change you need to take a baseline. I also wanted to see the difference across devices. Speedtest.net provided performance information used below. I should note that I also run multiple tests on each device to ensure that no single result was out of a reasonable range.

Linksys E2300

Laptop (HP ENVY 6v6) Wireless Connection

Desktop (Alienware Aurora) Wired Connection

Phone (iPhone 5) Wireless Connection

Not bad at all, but only the desktop is hitting the numbers I would expect from the FiOS connection. In fact, on the download, the desktop is pulling 84Mb even though they only promise 75Mb. 

Let's drop in the Asus and check out the differences.

Asus RT-ACU66U

Laptop (HP ENVY 6v6) Wireless Connection

Desktop (Alienware Aurora) Wired Connection

Phone (iPhone 5) Wireless Connection

Results
Oddly, the wired connection shows a slightly slower upload speed on the desktop. However, this is massively offset on the wireless side with both wireless devices being able to pull greater than 70MB, with iPhone almost hitting 80Mb. The upload speeds increased notably on both the laptop and phone.

Since the Asus is a dual band unit it actually broadcasts two SSIDs. One for the 2.4GHz network and another for the 5GHz. The iPhone can see and connect to the 5GHz network which may explain it's slightly better performance on that laptop. Interestingly, the iPad 3 also can see the 5GHz network though it refused to connect until it was restarted. Once done, it did improve from 28Mb down/32Mb up... to about 43Mb down and 40Mb up. I suspect that difference has more to do with the older processor and connectivity chipset on the iPad. I'd speculate that the iPad 4 would probably go toe to toe with the iPhone 5. 

Conclusion
Moving to the Asus certainly looks like a winning move at this point. I'm seeing much better performance with anecdotally better range (I didn't do any specific testing before and after but it seems a little stronger). Additionally, it resolves my internal network performance issues even though it does a little on the upload speed. 

It's a pricey unit but definitely worth the cash from a performance standpoint. The real report will come over the course of the next few months as we look at stability and performance over time. Will it be running trouble free a year from now? Time will tell. For now, the Linksys is sitting in a box awaiting the next trip to the recylcer.