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Strengths: Sturdy, reliable, great customer support
Weaknesses: Signal range not great, could have better software
Summary: 2004-06-24 22:54:09 My review primarily deals with the use of this router in a Macintosh environment; I have never used it with a PC. I bought this router to replace my old 802.11b Netgear that was dropping connection too often. The first unit arrived defective (did not work in wireless mode). After some nice e-mail exchange with Asante's Al Peterson (their user forum star, a friendly and knowledgeable guy) the company quickly replaced the unit and it worked. As many other users, I have experienced some connection drops, temporary inability to set up WEP encryption, some problems with MAC address control. An annoying thing was that the router came with old firmware and the new one that was posted on the Asante web site was not perfect either. Some forum folks still prefer the old one. However, Al told everybody that new firmware had a new version at their ftp site and that one worked much better. Moreover, the router temperature seemed to drop after firmware upgrade. One of the problems that is plaguing most routers may be some conflicts with the computer software, not the router's. My Apple Aluminum PowerBook started "liking" the router only after upgrades of OS to 10.3.4 and Airport Extreme card software to the latest 3.4.1. Since I now believe that the major culprit in previously experienced problems was OS software, I recommend this router to everybody. Besides, this is the only router that an LA store, Mac Enthusiasts, stocks for Mac users. A minor feature in the router software that I don't like is that every time you change the settings (like encryption), you have to reboot the router, which immediately loses connection and has to be reconnected manually through the browser-assisted menu (my old Netgear was reconnecting through PPPoE automatically). Other than that, setting up the router is relatively simple through the web interface; when in doudt call their really good customer support. A real drawback (confirmed by others as well) is that 40 feet away from the router the Airport monitor shows 2-3 bars out of 4 (on average, 50-60% signal). This may lead to a slowdown of the connection. Some people though say that a Hawking antenna used instead of the router's own can boost the signal strength (see Asante user forum). Apart from this, it is a stable and nice-looking machine; my latest record was about two weeks without connection loss.
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