The Asus RT-N13U is almost exactly what we expect from a mature, mainstream product category. At $57.75, the N13U looks to provide middle of the road performance with enough low-cost (but useful) features to make the device desirable. We don’t mean features like WPA and WPA2 encryption, or NAT and SPI firewall protection. These built-ins have been around for so long that we now expect them to be part of any router and would only call them out if they were omitted. This is also true of Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) support for easier WLAN security setup and client connecting.
More interesting is that the N13U is 2.4 GHz-only and uses a pair of 3 dBi antennas, so we wouldn’t necessarily expect roaring performance. All four rear LAN ports are 10/100. We admit that 10/100 is still amply fast for most home users. After all, you’re unlikely to have a high-def video stream with more than a 60 Mb/s bit rate (Blu-ray tops out at 40 Mb/s), but we still chafe at settling for slower connections in this time of terabyte-sized NAS backups.
Asus does integrate one USB 2.0 port for printer sharing, allowing you to make any printer wireless or Ethernet-based. You can also use the port for add-on USB storage, turning the router into a NAS device and (thanks to the fairly friendly bundled software) FTP server. Probably our favorite feature is the switch on the bottom that lets the router jump into repeater or access point modes. We suppose the AP feature might make sense if you had a Gigabit switch and wanted to dangle an 11n access point from it. With 11n access points starting at $45, why not buy the router? We prefer the repeater function, because someday you’re going to upgrade that router, and when you do, you’ll have a repeater standing by to help fill in dead spots in your WiFi coverage.
Asus throws in some nifty networking utilities that help simplify setup and maintenance so you don’t need to manage option menus. If you’re a chronic downloader, the BitTorrent download client might come in handy. We’re more interested in the “EZQoS” function for prioritizing certain traffic types, such as games or FTP, although we wish this QoS engine were more granular.
Think of the RT-N16 ($94.99) as the N13U’s big brother. You now get two USB 2.0 ports instead of one, three antennas instead of two, and four gigabit LAN ports. This is still a 2.4 GHz-only product, but Asus builds in a 480 MHz processor, theoretically sufficient for the next time you want to run two or three hundred thousand concurrent P2P streams. The EZQoS help carries over, as does the printer sharing, FTP, and all the other GUI goodies. We’ll see if almost twice the price gets you twice the performance.
- Router Reignition
- Asus RT-N13U And RT-N16
- Belkin N150 And N1 Vision
- D-Link DIR-685
- Linksys WRT610N
- Netgear WRN2000v2 And WNDR3700
- Ruckus Wireless 7811
- TP-Link WR741ND
- TRENDnet TEW-654TR And TEW-671BR
- ZyXEL X550N
- How We Tested
- Benchmark Results: 1GB Transfer, Many Files
- Benchmark Results: 1GB Transfer, Single File
- Benchmark Results: IxChariot Throughput
- Benchmark Results: IxChariot Response Time
- Benchmark Results: Zap TCP
- Benchmark Results: Zap UDP
- Benchmark Results: PerformanceTest TCP
- Benchmark Results: PerformanceTest UDP
- Conclusion



Good point.
Which firmware was installed on it?
I have one (V1), but am very unhappy about the signal range! I have it replaced with a WNDR3700 and have now a twice as strong signal as before!
Bit the bullet with the $$ and opted for the Linksys and am very pleased.
pato, my WRT600N was the v1 variant. I forget the release version of the firmware, but it was the latest version, as Linksys has not released any updates for it in roughly a year (I've had the router since a few months after it was first released). I liked it due to the dual radios, however, but it would drop wireless clients randomly (which was aggravating and required me to reset the router about once every other month) and it would not retain my port forwarding settings for my home server. And I agree with you, signal range was marginal with that router.
2) Should have tested N + G concurrency on 2.4GHz as well as N only on 2.4 + 5GHz concurrency (for devices that had dual radio). This data is important for most people who will run a Wireless N device or two, but likely also have a few smart phones or a game console that only supports 2.4GHz... I know the Airport Extreme currently has a bug making this dog slow, do some of the others?
3) onyl 2 concurrent devices? how about 5 or 6? I regularly have 7 or 8. I notice performance drops off consistently just based on the number of connected devices, even if only one is "in use" actively downloading, and want to know if some routers hold out better with that.
4) no feature comparison chart?
How much did you guys test the shareport function? (Not much from what it looks like). The shareport function hooked up to an external hard drive only works if you are transferring a file or two using windows. It totally fails when you try to us it with a 3rd party backup program (such as acrea). I personally haven't tried connecting a printer to shareport. I also couldn't get it to work using eraser (a disk erasing utility. I concluded that it just doesn't work with third party apps. So far, none of the driver, firmware or shareport software updates have fixed this problem.
D-link does have a nice forum on their site where people can post their problems. For fixable problems, other users will helpfully solve your problems. For unsolvable problems (shareport being one of them) the user complaints just keep piling up. Rarely do d-link's own tech support grace the forums. Apparently, D-link is currently collecting all of the shareport grips and cataloging them. Ostensibly, this will result in a fix at some point in the future. Still waiting.