SmallNetBuilder

Features

ASUS has revamped its admin GUI for the RT-N66U with an updated look. But users of other ASUS routers will notice a similarity to some of the old GUI's features and organization. Logging into the admin interface for the first time launches a wizard (Figure 6).

You don't have an option to skip the wizard and it makes you enter a username and password, but allows you to continue to use the default (admin/admin). Detection of my DHCP WAN connection type was very quick.

Figure 6: RT-N66U Setup Wizard

Part of the wizard is wireless network setup. I chose to not enable wireless encryption because I wanted to test WPS. But when I attempted to connect to the router, my client didn't indicate that it had found a WPS-enabled router and just let me connect unsecured.

I found that the wizard had set the WPS mode to Configured, but with no security enabled. So I had to reset WPS to take it out of Configured mode so that my client could execute a WPS PIN session, which ran successfully.

To double check, I reset the router to factory default and attempted to connect a wireless client without running the Wizard first. The client properly started a WPS session, which concluded with a WPA2/AES connection.

After you complete the wizard, subsequent logins take you to the Network Map. The Map is a similar mechanism to ASUS' previous GUI, providing clickable shortcuts to key setup features. Figure 7 shows the Network Map after clicking on the Internet Status box, with the right-side box showing Internet Status.

Figure 7: Network Map showing Internet Status

Before diving further into the user interface, here’s a summary of the Dark Knight's features compiled from its data sheet and admin interface.

Routing

• Static and Dynamic IP, PPPoE , PPTP, L2TP WAN connections
• MTU/MRU adjust (PPPoE only)
• DHCP Server w/ lease time setting, default domain and primary/secondary DNS
• DHCP Client list
• DHCP reservation
• Multicast routing and forwarding
• UDP proxy
• Switch jumbo frame enable
• UPnP enable/disable
• IPv4 Static Routes
• IPv6 support: Native; Native w/DHCP; Tunnel 6to4; Tunnel 6in4; Tunnel 6rd
• DDNS support for asus.com, dyndns.org, tzo.com, zoneedit.com
• Five level bandwidth-based QoS for upand download traffic.

Firewall

• Firewall enable/disable
• DoS protection enable
• Virtual Server/port forwarding for single or multiple ports with TCP, UDP or both protocols forwarded. Separate source and destination ports, not schedulable
• Triggered port forwarding for single ports, TCP or UDP, not schedulable
• URL keyword filter
• Per client internet access scheduling
• DMZ Host
• RTSP passthrough
• PPPoE relay
• Ignore Ping Packet from WAN port
• Outbound port filtering: black/white list with port range, source/destination IP, protocol and day/time filter

VPN

• PPTP server
• PPTP, L2TP,IPsec passthrough (default enable)

Management

• Remote Management with user configurable port (but no HTTPS)
• Syslog server support
• Command line interface via Telnet (default disable)
• Reboot and reset to factory default
• Save/restore settings
• Logs: System console, DHCP, Wireless, port forwarding, routing table

Wireless

• WEP, WPA / WPA2 Personal and Enterprise (RADIUS) support
• Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) support, pushbutton and PIN
• Auto, N-only, Legacy modes
• Auto and manual channel set
• Transmission rate set
• SSID broadcast enable/disable
• Radio enable day/time schedule
• WDS bridging / repeating
• Multicast transit rate
• Transmit power adjust
• Beacon period, RTS threshold, DTIM interval adjusts
• Transmit burst (default enable), multicast forwarding (default disable), WMM APSD (default enable) enables
• Wireless client isolation (from each other)
• Scheduled wireless enable/disable
• AP/router mode switch
• Four Guest networks per radio
• Wireless MAC address filtering (allow or deny based on MAC address)
• WMM disable

The main omission from the list above is support for secure HTTPS admin access. This isn't that big a deal for LAN-based management. But you'd really want to have it for remote access. The ability to limit access to an IP address or range, which the 66U also doesn't have, would also be helpful.