Asus joins the 802.11ac crowd with its RT-AC66U dual-band wireless router. It supports the fifth generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology, aka 5G WiFi, offering speeds up to three times faster than 802.11n. Powered by Broadcom’s 5G WiFi chip, the dual-band router works in both 2.4GHz (450Mbps) and 5GHz (1.3Gbps), offering a combined bandwidth of 1.75Gbps.
The RT-AC66U features Asus’ AiRadar technology to “strengthen signals to devices, amplifying transmission in all directions to better overcome environmental obstructions and improve data rates”. It also includes QoS for bandwidth optimization and supports IPv6 standard for better packet transmission and addressing. The router has two USB ports, which means you can attach a 3G USB dongle to share 3G connection, connect a USB storage device to share files and bring a printer to your home network. With full DLNA compatibility, wireless media streaming is easy. The RT-AC66U supports 128-bit WEP, WPA2-PSK, WPA-PSK, WPA-Enterprise, WPA2-Enterprise security and has a WPS button. There are four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports and three detachable antennas.
Othe than the router, Asus also brings two more 802.11ac products, the PCE-AC66 PCI Express card and the USB-AC53 USB dongle. The former is a 802.11ac PCI-E adapter with 3 x 3 high-powered transmission capable to handle 1.3Gbps in 5GHz and up to 450Mbps in the 2.4GHz band. The USB-AC53 is a USB adapter with 2 x 2 802.11ac that delivers a total throughput of 1.3GHz, with 867Mbps in 5GHz and 300Mbps in 2.4GHz.
