By Ki Grinsing

Overview

Building a wireless network environment for your small home office is very important. This will include a router / firewall for network protection and internet share, a LAN switch for wired connection, a print server to allow your single printer to share, and a wireless access point for extending the network wirelessly. Having multiple devices for your small office would be complicated for mostly home users with lack of computer networking knowledge. But with Asus RT-N16, you can get rid of those multiple devices in building a wireless network for your home office.

What this product does

This is the first generation of Asus wireless router products which is popular with its dual USB ports.

High speed

ASUS RT-N16 Wireless-N Gigabit Router with MIMO (multiple input multiple output) technology is powered by the wireless N technology to deliver the speeds of up to 300 Mbps which simultaneously handle file transfers and downloads, video streaming, games and VoIP calls.

Two USB ports

Unlike other wireless routers with single USB port for print share or storage share, the RT-N16 router includes two USB ports to allow you share your USB printer and USB storage at the same time. Click Asus RT-N16 spec details.

Installation the multifunction printer for share is easy with EZ All-In-One Printer by running the “Asus network printer setup” program and you just need to follow step-by step instruction. You do not need to purchase a print server to allow you share your single multifunction printer with multiple users in the network. Just plug the printer into the router’s USB port and run the program.

You can use the other USB port for sharing the disk storage. With the ASUS AiDisk technology you can share a single USB storage with users and allow the user access the storage by a user friendly ftp server such as ftp:// your_name.asuscomm.com. Forget about difficulty in remembering the ftp server IP address, use the DDNS address.

Gigabit interfaces

For fast speed wired connection, you can connect your desktop with Gigabit Ethernet NIC enabled to the router using UTP network cable. The RT-16N includes 4-port LAN Gigabit Switch with auto cross-over function (MDI-X) means the port will detect the cable type automatically either cross or straight through cable.

To provide IP address configuration to all the client computer in the network, the router support the DHCP server up to 253 IP addresses. You can configure the DHCP server with lease time, IP pool, domain name and so on like normally you do with business class DHCP server in large scale computer network.

Networking Solution

The figure below shows typical home networking diagram that uses ASUS RT-N16 Wireless-N Gigabit Router. Connect to either cable modem (such as SurfBoard 5101 by Motorola) or ADSL modem to share a single broadband internet connection with many client computers in the network. The router supports gigabit WAN port you can connect to the Ethernet port of the modem using UTP cross cable (network cable that comes with the modem).

One USB port is connected to the USB share storage, and the other USB port is connected to the multifunction USB printer. You can connect the desktop with NIC gigabit adapter directly to the router Ethernet ports. With your game console, you can install a wireless gaming adapter to connect wirelessly to the network to enjoy your online gaming without the clutter of the wires.

ASUS RT-N16 Wireless-N Gigabit Router is a good solution for your home office to work and play. RT-N16 is a single solution for router, print server and media server.

New Asus Router Products

Recently Asus introduces new Dual band wireless routers with two USB ports too, same function as RT-N16 router. The first Asus router with dual band feature is RTN56U black diamond series which is the first router with N600 technology.   This router receives very positive responses from the users with averagely 4.0 out of five stars customer ratings. With the new router introductions with rich of features today, the price of this RT-N56U router is getting lower, around $110 in the market. It’s a valuable product you may consider for your home network environment.

At the end of Dec 2011, Asus RT-N66U was available in the marketplace. This is the new router with higher speed of N900 technology. This router is designed differently than the first Asus RT-N56U (which is designed with internal antennas). It is designed with three detachable external antennas for high power signal strength. Later, the last quarter of 2012, Asus also comes with 802.11ac technology – the Asus RT-AC66U which the speeds reach the gigabit speed. Have a look more details on this RT-N66U Vs RT-AC66U.