ASUS RT-N56U: Dual-band is better, and here’s why:
Way back in May, Suds broke the news of ASUS’ latest, gorgeously styled wireless router: the RT-N56U. While most of the tech was covered there, I just wanted to highlight the dual-band situation a little more specifically though, to detail why is it important and how it can be used around the home.
The RT-N56U can work in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands – the former of which sees far more common use in the 802.11b/g/n wireless standards. Throw in almost every consumer item that has some remote shenanigans going on using that bandwidth as well and they are pretty much packed out these days. The 5GHz range however has less competition, but the downside is that it’s range is shorter. Typically people want both range and performance, but physics dictates you can’t really do that hugely cranking up the power and blocking out everyone else in your neighbourhood! Instead, why not choose which better suits certain wireless devices.
For example, if you have the router within a short distance from the phone socket, it’s likely also within hop and a jump from your games console, home theatre PC, NAS box and soon enough, your internet enabled HDTV as well. With a compatible adapter, those can all sit on the 5GHz band and benefit from less congestion, more bandwidth and a faster connection. Then you use the 2.4GHz option for your notebook, netbook and/or tablet as you roam about the house, which now also has better connectivity because the other stuff above right next to the router isn’t hogging all the airwaves.
Combined with the RT-N56U’s internal aerials that can optimise the signal transmission using ASUS’ AI Radar technology, and a beefier processor that boosts Gigabit Networking performance to its limit and allows a massive 300,000 peer-to-peer connections, it’s essentially like having two high-quality routers in one sleek, designer package.
Even an average PC or notebook is limited by its network performance and its internet connection, so removing as much of those bottlenecks as possible with a high performance and reliable router creates less stress and headaches waiting for things to happen, especially if you spend most of your day online.