Our routers served us pretty well over the last 5 years or so considering it was second hand and rescued from the skip! As a switch it was no longer big enough for work so they upgraded. Until recently I’d only ever used it for wired connections (other than the ipod). But since I got the iPad and we switched the xBox over to wireless I’ve noticed the wireless connections are very temperamental.

Everything else runs sweet still and we have no problem video Skyping friends and family. The camera is actually on an old computer downstairs that runs through a Powerline adapter, ie using our house electrical wires as a network, to the router upstairs. You’d think that’d be flakey but running HD video chats to friends in Canada and Europe is flawless and theres very little lag.

Sadly the same can’t be said for Facetime over wireless which I use more and more for work so picking the right one took a bit of time.

I eventually went with the Asus RT-N56U, a gigabit router that uses a radar like system to optimise the wireless signal and also uses two frequencies rather than the usual one, 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz giving more bandwidth and reliability. It’ll be interesting to see how it copes with all the walls, floors and RSJ’s in this house.

While its not the best money can buy, for my budget its pretty good though out of the box it’ll require a firmware upgrade to improve some software issues. Lets hope its an improvement.  I’ll update this with some feedback onces its up and running.

Cnets Review.

Edit: . Well as expected theres no difference except with wifi. Unfortunately Facetime didn’t want to work on 5Ghz even though the iPad saw it and logged in. The guys phoned me but I never got the request. On 2.4Ghz however it was rock solid.

And as coincidences go .. I phoned my dad to tell him I’d bought one and before I could he mentioned that HE’d just bought one .. exactly the same one! I’d not spoken to anyone about my choice so that can only mean that UFO’s are real and the Yeti lives in the park over the road.