ASUS WL-566gM

Recently, we tested a wireless router with support for the MIMO technology by LevelOne. This time, we got a model by ASUS and, running ahead I must sat it showed attractive results indeed. Developers have long been working hard trying to achieve a real data transmission rate comparable to that of the wireline network. All remember various technologies with the high-flown figures – 108, 125 Mbit/s, but so far it's been impossible to talk about such a high user data transmission rate. Finally, a solution has come up which is able providing the users with a rate comparable to that for wireline networks.

Here, we are reviewing the wireless router WL-566gM and the WL-106gM adapter. Curiously, the manufacturer decided not to violate the traditions of marking its wireless equipment, and the model name has the number 240 which of course doesn't denote the transmission rate available to the user but simply tells the rate of the wireless channel. However, large red letters on the box denote that the real operation speed achieves 100 Mbit/s. Let's try to sort that out how true it is.

MIMO technology

We already told about the MIMO technology in our previous reviews, so we'd better not dwell on that and instead briefly remind its key distinctions from the previous methods of transmitting a radio signal. This technology implies that every receiver and transmitter uses a number of independent antennas and, respectively, receivers and transmitters. Therefore, it does not suffice to simply install three instead of one antenna at the access point. To give birth to this technology, the transmitted data stream has to be specially divided so that each route transmitted its own part. That is, at an instant of time different antennas will transmit different signals, which in theory allows raising the transmission rate while there are vacant parts of the spectrum. As every new channel is added, the rate rises at the amount of the rate of this very channel, but that is only in theory. I practice, we have to consider a number of parameters, including the rate of dividing the overall stream.

WL-566gM Package Bundle

The router is shipped in a stylish cardboard box of a smart design. By the way, the setting of the adapter package is very similar to that of the router, except the image of the device. The router came bundled with the following items: a power supply unit, a network cable, CD with software and documentation, as well as a printed copy of the installation and setup guide. The adapter is bundled with: a CD with drivers, utilities and documentation, as well as printed version of the installation and setup guide. In any case, that's enough for a quick start working with the equipment.

Exterior and design

The exterior of the router is attractive enough and combines a simplicity and processability, which are seen even upon the first look at it. The housing is white, with silvery edging, has three mid-sized antennas. The upper panel has a number of vent holes which improve the cooling of the device's components. Traditionally, the front panel has all the required indicators and the marking of the device. Note that the indicators themselves are interesting enough: there are no customary square windows for LEDs, the labels are made transparent. That is not only attractive, but also allows controlling operation of the device under a dim illumination. There are the following indicators: power, active status of the wireless network, activity of the LAN ports and the WAN port. As you see, there is nothing redundant and at the same time al is sufficient.

On the rear panel of the router, there are all the ports (one WAN and four LAN ports, all 10/100Base-TX), a power connector, buttons to tune and reset the parameters, as well as three antennas which, unfortunately, can't be either removed or replaced. Note that there is no on-off switch. The button for fast tuning juts out, so there is no problem to press it; as to the button to reset parameters, it is recessed into the housing to avoid accidental presses.

The bottom part of the router also has a number of vent holes, four legs with rubber foot, a pair of hinges for wall mounting, and of course a sticker with the information about the device.

Interior

The upper and bottom part are fastened with four self-tapping screws under the rubber feet. The exterior of the board is shown on the below photo.

The router board is shielded from both sides with a metal housing, which allows reducing the induction at the router and at the source. The wireless part is made as a separate module. To implement the wireless part, there is used the Airgo solution on the base of the AGN300 chipset which includes a MAC-level processor AGN303BB, controllers PHY AGN301RF and AGN302R. The chipset allows handling a data stream up to 240 Mbit/s using channels of 40 MHz width (two adjoining 20 MHz channels), or up to 126 Mbit/s – with 20 MHz channels. It offers hardware implementation of the WEP encryption (64 and 128 bit), TKIP and AES, which means a high network operation speed even if robust encryption is used. Three antennas are connected to this board. Note that their connected are filled up with a special mastic to avoid spontaneous disconnection.

As a wireless client we used the adapter ASUS WL-106gM which supports the same technology as the router. We did not use any other adapters in our network, so we can talk about the rate of the tested equipment achieved without outside influence.

Configuration

For tuning, a convenient Web interface is used. Open the browser and navigate to the address 192.168.1.1. Of course, the address of the computer from which we access should be within the same network, that is, within the range 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.254, with the net mask 255.255.255.0. However, you are unlikely to think about the addresses - it suffices to enable automatic detection of IP settings from the DHCP server and update the parameters.

You will be prompted to enter your access credentials (user name/password) to log on to this important resource. Remember that the "admin/admin" pair is used by default. If the logon credentials are input successfully, you will be directed to the home page of the router setup where at the first start-up you can use of the setup wizard which will guide you through the main setup stages. Part of the stages is briefly described on the home page, and others have to be learned on your own. Navigation around the sections is done from a menu in the left-hand part of the page. The sections are grouped quite logically and are unlikely to mislead the user searching a specific parameter. In the left-hand part of the page we counted as many as eight sections (let alone Home and Logout): Quick Setup, Wireless, IP Config, NAT Setting, Internet Firewall, Bandwidth Management, System Setup, and Status & Log.

Now, a few more detail on the setup interface. On the home page, besides the main menu in the left-hand part, there are links to some sections which describe the key features of the device.

Many users will find the setup wizard quite handy which will help pass through all the stages of the main router setup. The wizard assumes six stages (including the wizard start-up and re-set) which cover setting up the time zone, type and details of the external connection, as well as wireless network settings. See the screenshots of these stages below.

The next stage is the wireless network setup. Gathered here are all the settings to adjust for the integrated wireless access point. Four pages are provided for them. On the first page, we set up the network ID, the channel, operation mode, use and type of encryption. For WEP, 64- and 128-bit keys are supported, but we don't recommend to use them because of poor security. However, in our case we can use, for example, the WPA-PSK with a shared password. In this case, AES or TKIP encryption will be used. You can also introduce a stronger system: the WPA-EAP, but in this case the authentication will be done at the external RADIUS server, whereas the same AES or TKIP protocols will be used for encryption.

Among the wireless network security settings, there is also access restriction based on MAC addresses. The filter can be disabled or enabled into one of the modes: to allow access to all except those in the list, or, on the contrary, do not allow anyone except those in the list. The list is defined on the next page of the Wireless section.

The security settings configuration does not end at that, of course. If what was described above is not enough, you can use authorization of wireless clients on the external RADIUS server. To configure such option, navigate to the next section and specify the server location and the password to log on. In the encryption parameters, select the type, for example, WPA.

All the other wireless network settings are gathered on a separate page of the section. Here you can specify such settings like hiding the SSID, operation speed, notification timeout (Beacon), use of QoS, etc.

The next section assumes configuration of the interfaces. Here you specify the connection types and interface addresses. For the external interface, a number of connection types are supported: with static and dynamic IP, as well as PPTP and PPPoE.

The router has an integrated DHCP server with the capability of associating IP-addresses to MAC-addresses.

The third page is used for configuration of the time settings (time zone and server), UPnP, as well as DDNS.

There is a separate section for NAT settings. Remember that NAT separates the internal network from external not letting in any traffic except that which arrived in response from the internal network. However, some applications require access from outside through strictly defined ports. In this case, static and dynamic redirection of ports is assumed for use. The dynamic redirection is configured on the first page, and static (also called a virtual server) - on the second page.

Whenever neither dynamic nor static redirection of ports can provide the required availability, you can use the demilitarized zone. In this case, all the packets arriving at the external router port will be redirected to a specified internal address.

To configure the integrated firewall, there is a separate section which contains three pages. The first page lists the settings like enable/disable, logging, Web access from outside, and response to ping queries from the external port.

On the next page, there are configuration settings to restrict packet transmission between the LAN and WAN interfaces. As rules you can specify the week day or the time when the rule will be active.

Besides this restriction, there are also restrictions based on the keywords in the URL-address. These restrictions are configured on the third page of the firewall settings.

Although there is a separate section to configure the bandwidth, it contains only one page where the rules for transmission rate restriction for two-way traffic are defined: separately for the incoming and outgoing traffic.

The System Setup section contains no features needed for daily router management. From this page, you can change the logon password to the administration interface, update the firmware, as well as save or load the settings or clear the settings to the factory defaults.

The Status & Log section allows browsing the info on the operation of the device: the current time, activity status of the interfaces, current wireless clients, current DHCP server clients, and the system log.

Tests

We have now sorted out with the router's capabilities and now move on to testing the performance. To this end, we'll be testing the following hardware: a computer on the base of CPU AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice) with 1 GB RAM and integrated Gigabit network controller on the Marvell chipset, powered by Windows XP Professional SP2, a notebook PC based on CPU Intel Pentium M 1.7 with 512 MB RAM (used for connection of the wireline segment in the routing tests, and to test the wireless segment with the adapter ASUS WL-106gM), also powered by Windows XP Professional SP2. To test transmission rate, we used the NetIQ Chariot system.

Routing rate

We could not pass by the tests of the routing speed capabilities of this device. In these tests, we used solely the wireline interfaces WL-566gM and connected our stationary PC to the WAN port (on that PC we also launched the test console Chariot), and a notebook PC to one of the LAN ports. In the end, we produced high enough transmission rates shown on the diagram.

It is absolutely evident that this device will no be a bottleneck in your network and will provide you with routing at the rate of the interface.

Wireless network data rate

As usual, we divided the tests of the wireless network into two stages. At the first stage, we measured the operation speed of the adapters at the same distance, as well as the effect of encryption on the transmission rate. We intentionally did not change the settings of the equipment thus verifying the operability under default settings. To produce a more precise result of the operation speed of the wireless segment, we connected the wireline segment to the LAN port and avoided the effect of the routing rate. The distance between the router and the adapter was about two meters, there were no obstacles, therefore the conditions for transmission can be regarded as ideal. In running the tests, we detected no foreign wireless networks. In so doing, we produce four average values of transmission rate (for various traffic directions with the use of encryption taken into account). As the encryption method, we used the most reliable of those available to the user – WPA2-PSK (AES). Having sorted out with the test methodology, we move on to the test results.

As you can see, the results have proved quite interesting, and we have never come across such a high performance of wireless network equipment before. There has come the time when the real transmission rate available to the user over the wireless network has reached almost 100 Mbit/s.

At the second stage, we tested the performance of the wireless network at a distance from the router. At the same time, one of the LAN ports of the router was connected to the stationary PC, and the wireless adapter was installed on the test notebook. Here we did not use encryption, and all the settings of the router and clients were left unchanged. Of course, use of encryption in fact did not affect the rate of wireless connection, but for the purity of experiment... Finally, we ran tests of the equipment in three locations:

• at 7 meter distance from the access point, without obstacles;
• at 12 meter distance to the access point, with an internal brick wall between the adapter and the access point;
• at 15 meter distance from the access point + two main brick walls in between.

Here are the results of testing the bandwidth using the adapter.

These tests have also shown quite good results, including those at complex locations. And, along with average rate, the channel stability also proved on par. Although the wireline network shows better stability, the results for wireless network are also good enough.

Final words

The router showed superb performance of the wireless network which has finally reached the level of Fast Ethernet. We can state that the rate of the wireless connection using this equipment will be comparable to that of a 100-Mbit wireline connection. Of course, only on condition the channel is used exclusively and the signal is minimum.

In other words, the router has proved that the MIMO mode is not just a new abbreviation which is aimed at attracting the buyers, but a technology that allows increasing the real data transmission rate noticeable to the user. Certainly, the available rate has not reached 240 Mbit/s, which is no wonder, but let's recall the 802.11b and 802.11g standards. That time, the rate did not reach neither 11 nor 54 Mbit/s, respectively.

As regards the functionality, the router also proved quite good as well. There are all the features required for the common user, and some settings will also be handy for professionals.

Somehow or other, we have got a router which allows operating both in the wireline and wireless networks, without taking care of which connection type to use – the rate will be almost the same. At the same time, use of encryption of the wireless traffic does not at all degrade the operation speed of the network.

In view of the above, we award the router ASUS WL-566gM with our supreme reward – «the Editor's Choice».