Narrowed it down to: Asus RT-N56U & Draytek 2830N...which one should it be?

hughythomas

hughythomas

hughythomas

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Thank you if you posted in my last thread - I have done some research into which Wireless Access Point would be most suitable for my needs and think I have successfully narrowed it down to two contenders, namely:

1. Asus RT-N56U Black Diamond
2. Draytek 2830N

Just wondering which is the better router?

My criteria:

1. 4x Gigabit LAN ports
2. Concurrent dual band 2Ghz/5Ghz wireless capabilities
3. Fast network transfer speeds on wireless
4. USB port capable of external HD support

My PC will be connecting wirelessly (via a TP-Link 300Mbps PCI card). I am keen to keep network speeds as quick as possible as it is replacing gigabit wired which I can't carry on using.

Would appreciate some thoughts guys! I had pretty much decided on the Asus as I read many gleeming reviews. It is £95 off OcUK. However, the Draytek also looks extremely tempting (albeit the more expensive choice in at £170 elsewhere!). Unfortunately, I cannot find any reviews online (and it looks ugly!!!).

What ya reckon?
 
Review for the 2830N here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...lus-dual-wan-adsl2-security-firewall-reviewed

Looking at them both, I'd say the 2830N has more features. It has 64MB of RAM and 8MB of flash.

The RT-N56U on the other hand is faster in terms of throughput. It has 128MB of RAM and 8MB of flash.

Neither of them natively support IPv6 but there is a firmware update coming for the N56U.

If you think you'll use more of the bells and whistles on the 2830N, go with that, although I'm guessing most of them are software based which means performance will never be it's forte.
If you don't need those features, then the N56U is the way to go.
 
Thanks for the replies guys!

I can't make head nor tail of the benchmarks for the Draytek here:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...2-security-firewall-reviewed?showall=&start=3

Presumably, in an ideal world we could stack up the Asus against the Draytek in terms of wireless network speeds but I can't tell if the Asus is slower or faster than the Draytek?

The router will be sat in a control room of my recording studio and the furthest away any client will be is roughly 15feet. I guess it would make sense to use the 5Ghz band predominantly for file copies etc.

Does anyone know if the Draytek or Asus is faster in this respect?
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/64-5-ghz-dn

Performance wise, the N56U thrashes the 2830N. It's at least 10% faster in all the wireless graphs.

The Total Simultaneous Throughput graph is the most eye-opening.
The N56U tops out at 1.2686Gbit/s
The 2830N tops out at 0.0835Gbit/s

From that perspective, it's not even close.
Click to expand...


Does that graph mean the 2830N performs poorly at handling multiple simultaneous clients?

At my home there is generally one wired client gaming (WoW), one wireless client connecting through VPN to a company network and another wireless client doing general browsing and possibly streaming media.

Does that graph mean the 2830N would not cope well with this?
 
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