Asus DSL-N13 review: Asus DSL-N13

Asus has either settled on a design, or decided that the cheapest way to make routers is to use essentially the same chassis over and over.

7.5

Asus DSL-N13

The Good

QoS settings are quite friendly. USB FTP server is plug and play, gives access to files on USB storage.

The Bad

UI is a slapdash job. No physical power button. Security offerings are lax compared to competitors.

The Bottom Line

The Asus DSL-N13 offers the basic needs for anyone looking to set up an ADSL2+-based network, although it's a little pricey considering its lack of security features and high power consumption. Still, some may find the USB FTP server functionality invaluable, and it should be a good workhorse in any home environment.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can make all the models a little difficult to tell apart. This one though is its ADSL2+ model, coming with four 100Mb Ethernet ports and two USB ports.

Specs at a glance

Connections

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ADSL jack, power, WPS and reset buttons, two USB 2.0 ports and four 100Mb Ethernet ports make up the DSL-N13's connectivity. (Credit: Alexandra Savvides/CBS Interactive)

The most interesting bit is the USB functionality, which is more than just print sharing. If you plug storage into the DSL-N13, it will immediately set up an FTP server to share the content on. Plug it into Asus' free dynamic DNS service, and you've got a quickly set-up, internet-facing FTP server.

Most annoyingly, the DSL-N13 doesn't have a physical power button — something that we believe is a necessity given how often some routers require a forced restart.

UI and features

Unlike the RT-N16, the DSL-N13 uses Asus' old user interface (UI), with ugly neon green and purple. While at first glance it's relatively simple, it's actually rather heavily featured.

The work experience kid clearly coloured this one. (Screenshot by CBS Interactive)

Unfortunately, if you have a screen size of less than 768 vertical pixels, menu options will simply disappear, rather than a scroll bar appearing, a large oversight for usability.

The standard features of course are here: DHCP (along with a static IP reserve list), dynamic DNS support and port forwarding. There is QoS as well, but it comes in an interesting graphical form, where you can click any combination of "Gaming Blaster", "Internet Application", "DSL-N13 FTP Server" or "VoIP/Video streaming". You can also prioritise traffic by ranking eight different source IPs. It may not be highly configurable, but we greatly appreciate the ease of use this offers for end users.

QoS, without all the intimidating jargon. (Screenshot by CBS Interactive)

Security is limited, offering an IP/port block list, and time of day restrictions based on MAC addresses.

Asus includes discovery tools and an easy set-up wizard on the included CD — they're nothing special, but they do remove that interim step of dashing into a command prompt to figure out what the router's default IP is.

Performance

After analysing the spectrum with InSSIDer, an empty channel of either 1, 6 or 11 is chosen for 2.4GHz wireless testing. The router is restricted to the 20MHz band and will only allow 802.11n clients. If possible, the MCS is set to 15.

We use iperf to determine throughput, running eight streams, with a TCP window size of 1MB, and an interval of one second. The test is run for five minutes in three different locations, on two separate occasions. The locations are in the same room as the router, one floor down around spiral stairs and with concrete walls and floors, and two floors down under the same conditions.

The wireless throughput is tested using three chipsets, the Atheros AR5008X, RaLink RT2870 and Intel 5100AGN, then all results are averaged.

(Longer bars indicate better performance)

For some bizarre reason despite no competing networks, we could not connect to the DSL-N13 while it was operating on channel six, forcing us to opt for channel one. While it's not the fastest of the pack, it's not the slowest either, with its ranged performance hurting the most.

ADSL performance is simply measured by the sync speed on an Internode ADSL2+ connection to the St Leonards exchange, on Internode's very high speed profile. If the connection remains stable over a period of time, the sync speed is recorded.

(Longer bars indicate better performance)

It's much of a muchness here. In anecdotal testing, the line remained stable for the entire period of testing.

Power consumption

We measured power consumption using a Jaycar mains digital power meter. It's important to note here that due to limitations of the meter, measurements are limited to values 1W and greater, and are reported in 1W increments.

The wireless radio was turned on, and an iperf test begun for measurement, using one wireless client and one wired.

Juice Box
Transmitting	11W
Idle	7W

Eeks! While the idle is normal, the Asus peaks at a higher transmitting usage than anything else we've tested so far. Usually routers have pulled about 9W in this test.

Warranty

Asus covers the DSL-N13 with a three year warranty, with the product needing to be returned to an Asus service centre.

Conclusion

The Asus DSL-N13 offers the basic needs for anyone looking to set up an ADSL2+-based network, although it's a little pricey considering its lacking security features and high power consumption. Still, some may find the USB FTP server functionality invaluable, and it should be a good workhorse in any home environment.