New super fast Asus router, RT 66U "Black Knight" coming out

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YeOldeStonecat

[H]F Junkie
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Been catching wind of an upcoming super fast router....the Asus RT-66U.
Currently their RT-N56U has been the fastest router tested at smallnetbuilder....at over 800 megs throughput.

The new RT-66U has a 600MHz processor, and 1 gig of RAM. State table size (concurrent sessions) at over 300,000.

Supposed to be based on the Broadcom chipset......so it'll probably support DD-WRT...but to be honest, I saw some screenies of the Asus firmware for this unit...and holy crap what cool features.
Asus put up the emulator
http://service.asus.com/demoui/RT-N66U/RT-N66U/RT-N66U/192.168.1.1/

http://vr-zone.com/articles/exclusi...-n66u-dark-knight-dual-band-router/13760.html
 
I got excited for this router when it was unvieled at CES last year. I figured it was canceled or something since I hadn't seen much on it since.

Anybody read any potential release date rumors? The router is on Amazon as out of stock and says it was first available on 22 December 2011. I'm not sure if that was the actual release date or if that was the date the router was posted on the site.
 
Cod said:
Anybody read any potential release date rumors? The router is on Amazon as out of stock and says it was first available on 22 December 2011.
Click to expand...

I haven't found anything definitive. The only thing that's making it seem "real" is that Asus put up the firmware emulator in that link I put up above.

I've also seen a second batch of photos of it...with it having a thicker case to it, with a broad "V" shaped red light across the top. I prefer the case of the first pics I posted...sorta like the 56u black diamond model.

I'm very pleased with my Cisco e3000 unit at home...but may just snag this unit after initial release prices settles a bit.
Love the areas of the admin section of the web admin you can go into, monitor temps, fan speeds...etc. The traffic graphs are sweet looking.
 
Any word on pricing? I'd like to replace my D-Link DIR-655 with something that fully supports 802.11n
 
King of Heroes said:
Any word on pricing? I'd like to replace my D-Link DIR-655 with something that fully supports 802.11n
Click to expand...

If I recall, the n56u was around ~169 when it first came out.....so I'd expect the 66 to be roughly the same...maybe towards 180. Just guessing based on past trend.
 
Here is the link on Amazon to order it for $179.99.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
The "old" WNDR3700 has a 680Mhz CPU (Atheros) and 64Mb RAM ;-)
300 000 concurrent sessions is just a ridiculous measurement. That thing will crawl or rather hang before reaching that number or getting anywhere near it, hell even enterprise equipment doesn't handle that all the time. My biggest concern is why you would need that many connections, you're more than fine with < 2k for a home network even if you're hardcore.

FWIW, if you want to run a 3rd party firmware such as OpenWRT or DD-WRT (I would personally go for OpenWRT rather than DD-WRT anytime) the best platform in general if you're looking for performance would be an Atheros based one.

//Danne
 
diizzy said:
The "old" WNDR3700 has a 680Mhz CPU (Atheros) and 64Mb RAM ;-)
300 000 concurrent sessions is just a ridiculous measurement. That thing will crawl or rather hang before reaching that number or getting anywhere near it, hell even enterprise equipment doesn't handle that all the time. My biggest concern is why you would need that many connections, you're more than fine with < 2k for a home network even if you're hardcore.
Click to expand...

Agreed..it's waaaaaay overkill. But IMO it's nice to have consumer grade routers that excel in horsepower under the hood. You see people build x86 platform routers with pfsense or whatever...that are far overkill for their needs. Just good to see "off the shelf boxes" that can have this much power and performance. As well as having a web admin as rich in features as this one has, to satisfy us tech geeks that often crave more than the bland featureless web admins of typical home grade routers.
 
vr-zone has updated with

"A birdie told us that it will be using Broadcom radio, with 32MB for flash and 128MB of memory and an extra MicroSD socket for expansion."

Looks like the CES sign said 1Gb of RAM (128MB, way to confuse everyone ASUS!)


Not a phenomenal amount of ram, but it should still get the job done. Does anyone know if the MicroSD expansion counts towards the ram. If so, wouldn't that potentially slow the device down?
 
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Ehren8879 said:
Looks like the CES sign said 1Gb of RAM (128MB, way to confuse everyone ASUS!)?
Click to expand...

OK so wtf is up with that? Damn...enough stuff flying around out there about this box, and to be disappointed with breaking news like this? Bah!

I looked at that link...looks like they updated it twice..first was 256..then to 128 megs.
 
I have a 2820 in bridge with a 5505 firewall, an 1841 router and a Cisco WAP4410N AP. That router does look pretty cool but I think I will stick with this setup at the moment though
 
I'm probably going to upgrade to this from the RT-N16 for the dual band radio. Its almost the same system specs though.
 
In the demsg posts that have been made in the DD-WRT forums, it has 256MB of RAM. I think that the 128MB is a mistake. Here are some test and demsg outputs http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewto...start=45&sid=81d7204bfda90d60e2f254cade71cdaf. Seriously, I am curious what changes the community will make to this router. Even though it is slower than the RT-N56U, it seems to have some seriously nice features, and possible features that can be added in the future by the community.

BTW, for any RT-N56U owners, there is now 3rd party firmware support! I have been using it, and I am very pleased so far: http://code.google.com/p/rt-n56u/
 
diizzy said:
The "old" WNDR3700 has a 680Mhz CPU (Atheros) and 64Mb RAM ;-)
300 000 concurrent sessions is just a ridiculous measurement. That thing will crawl or rather hang before reaching that number or getting anywhere near it, hell even enterprise equipment doesn't handle that all the time. My biggest concern is why you would need that many connections, you're more than fine with < 2k for a home network even if you're hardcore.

FWIW, if you want to run a 3rd party firmware such as OpenWRT or DD-WRT (I would personally go for OpenWRT rather than DD-WRT anytime) the best platform in general if you're looking for performance would be an Atheros based one.

//Danne
Click to expand...

Yep, my my Netgear WNDR3700 with DD-WRT (been meaning to try OpenWRT) has been able to take everything I can throw at it here in my home... I don't think I'll be needing anything faster for a while. :)
 
What exactly will this do better/worse than it's predecessor based on what we know? Is it a worthwhile upgrade for a standard home network with a dozen or so wireless connection, a couple wired at any given time?
 
Fine for your home hobbyist though still sorely lacking for more advanced users. Wake me when they release something with that grade of hardware that supports DHCP options, VLANs, add back in the DDNS support they appear to have yanked, port-based 802.1x and QoS and better firewall control.
 
HeavensCloud said:
What exactly will this do better/worse than it's predecessor based on what we know? Is it a worthwhile upgrade for a standard home network with a dozen or so wireless connection, a couple wired at any given time?
Click to expand...

Hard to say how much of a performance boost it will have over the 56u....SmallnetBuilder will test it when it comes out..I'll see what that review says.
 
Fine for your home hobbyist though still sorely lacking for more advanced users. Wake me when they release something with that grade of hardware that supports DHCP options, VLANs, add back in the DDNS support they appear to have yanked, port-based 802.1x and QoS and better firewall control.
Click to expand...

It's Linux it wont take too long :). Besides it has a nice 32MB flash. I am sure there will be nice features added by the community.

Hard to say how much of a performance boost it will have over the 56u
Click to expand...

Not many things can compare to the RT-N56U with the HW NAT acceleration, it is very fast and can be felt. I recently, tried a DIR-827 and the latency difference between it and the N56U was amazingly different, especially with games. Anyways, in the link I provided previously had these results:

with beta firmware:
LAN to WAN - 510mbps
WAN to LAN - 548mbps
2.4ghz down - 56mbps
5ghz down - 89mbps
no time to test vpn

Here is a better link:
http://forums.vr-zone.com/networking-broadband/1755338-sneak-peek-asus-rt-n66u-black-knight.html

And, BTW, it is confirmed with 256MB of RAM.
 
Shikami said:
Not many things can compare to the RT-N56U with the HW NAT acceleration, it is very fast and can be felt. I recently, tried a DIR-827 and the latency difference between it and the N56U was amazingly different, especially with games. Anyways, in the link I provided previously had these results:

with beta firmware:
LAN to WAN - 510mbps
WAN to LAN - 548mbps
2.4ghz down - 56mbps
5ghz down - 89mbps
no time to test vpn.
Click to expand...

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...-dual-band-gigabit-wireless-n-router-reviewed

The 66 should be quicker than the 56...it's 100 MHz faster with the CPU..and has another 128 megs (assuming the 256 is correct..lol) The 56 did a hair over 800 megs throughput in the link I put above.
 
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The 66 should be quicker than the 56...it's 100 MHz faster with the CPU..and has another 128 megs (assuming the 256 is correct..lol) The 56 did a hair over 800 megs throughput in the link I put above.
Click to expand...

A faster processor does not always mean faster performance (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...inksys-e4200v2-dual-band-n900-router-reviewed). The N56U hardware NAT offloads a few processes of the stack and also NAT from the 74K MIPS core which below shows the difference alone in speed. 256MB is correct; owners of the router are showing the dmesg which reports 256MB.

Without HW-NAT

Client connecting to 10.10.1.1, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 87.5 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.10 port 44672 connected with 10.10.1.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 361 MBytes 303 Mbits/sec

With HW-NAT

Client connecting to 10.10.1.1, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 87.5 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.10 port 44674 connected with 10.10.1.1 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.10 GBytes 943 Mbits/sec
 
so for some home use should i just grab a 56 now or hold off for the 66?
Click to expand...

Well, the 56 is a really good router, but only after using 3rd party firmware which fixes some really annoying bugs. With 8MB flash there is not much space to store many additional packages. This may make it a bit limiting with additional features.

The 66, according to the users now it has really, really good range, and the 56 does have some good range to it too. Non-beta speed tests I have not heard much about, and I am looking into it. As for space it has 32MB and can store many additional packages.
 
Lets not forget that the CPU is often pulling double duty...such as running the wireless. The RALink CPU in the 56U also runs the 5.0 radio.
 
Lets not forget that the CPU is often pulling double duty...such as running the wireless. The RALink CPU in the 56U also runs the 5.0 radio.
Click to expand...

The wireless MAC's are detached from the host processor. These logic's are independent in nature, but are the same as in how they normally will request an interrupt from the processor, access memory, etc.. But this is a better configuration, I believe, to have them integrated into the processor, or at least one of them. This way it can prevent contention for a SoC that has only have one PCIe bus.

For example the DIR-827 has a PCIe bridge that uses a switch to control I/O from two 802.11a/b/g/n radios. However, the RT-N56U has one integrated 5GHz radio and 1 PCIe bus that has a 2.4GHz radio attached to it. I prefer this method than the PCIe switch/bridge.
 
shade91.

"Fine for your home hobbyist though still sorely lacking for more advanced users. Wake me when they release something with that grade of hardware that supports DHCP options, VLANs, add back in the DDNS support they appear to have yanked, port-based 802.1x and QoS and better firewall control."

+1
 
shade91 said:
Fine for your home hobbyist though still sorely lacking for more advanced users. Wake me when they release something with that grade of hardware that supports DHCP options, VLANs, add back in the DDNS support they appear to have yanked, port-based 802.1x and QoS and better firewall control.
Click to expand...

The solution is simple....3rd party firmware such as DD or Tomato. And keep DynDNS support on the officially supported software client installed on a host on your LAN, everyone knows the ones built into routers suck...their heartbeat intervals are too close together and get put on the "ignore list" by DynDNS (they even state on their website they shut off the built in router ones due to this)
 
munkle said:
any news to when this comes out?
Click to expand...

It's out in Europe already...some dude in Sweden that is a forum member at smallnetbuilder already has had one for about a week now and has been posting about it. Has a 100 meg internet pipe to his house...and says it's running strong, fast, and stable.

Supposed to hit the US market after Jan 15th according to that thread.
 
Honestly, I'm not well experienced or knowledgeable in networking. Would someone care to explain how this might be useful for home use as compared to a lesser modem, i.e., ASUS RT-N16 - DD-WRT? Do the people who own this (or n56u) also pay for high speed internet - say, 100Mbps? I'm not sure what the advantages are, and am honestly interested about these sorts of routers.
 
ArbY said:
Honestly, I'm not well experienced or knowledgeable in networking. Would someone care to explain how this might be useful for home use as compared to a lesser modem, i.e., ASUS RT-N16 - DD-WRT? Do the people who own this (or n56u) also pay for high speed internet - say, 100Mbps? I'm not sure what the advantages are, and am honestly interested about these sorts of routers.
Click to expand...

Well faster speeds transferring over your network from computer to computer should be improved as well as range and the ability to never bog down no matter what you throw at it. As we know many routers get overloaded have issues and need to be reset to get back to normal. I'm excited to see what the reviews on this are like after waiting for it to release for so long, but I am now on the pfsense bandwagon. :)
 
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