Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight Double

Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight Double

                          

       $159.99 to $200.00

the good: The true dual-band Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight Double 450Mbps N Routeroffers excellent coverage, stable wireless signals, and stellar data rates on the 5GHz band. The router comes with a generous feature set and can also work as a standalone VPN server.

The bad: The RT-N66U's firmware is a little buggy and its data rate on the 2.4GHz band could use some improvement. The router's USB ports don't support the USB 3.0 standard.

The bottom line: Though not perfect, the Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight Double 450Mbps N Router would make an excellent network gateway for home and small-office environments.

I've held off reviewing the Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight Double 450Mbps N Router until now due to some known bugs in earlier versions of its firmware. The latest, version 3.0.0.3.108, is still, well, a little buggy, but fortunately not seriously enough to keep the router from being an excellent networking device.

Being the first N900 router from Asus, the RT-N66U offers stellar performance on the 5GHz band and a vast number of features. The router also has great wireless range and was very stable in my testing. With two USB ports it has more to offer than other USB-enabled routers, and it was very fast when coupled with a storage device.

The RT-N66U isn't perfect, however. Performance on the 2.4GHz band was slower than I expected, and the router's USB ports lack support for the latest USB 3.0 standard. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a top-notch router for your home or even a small office, the RT-N66U is one of the best on the market, especially considering that its street price is lower than that of the Linksys E4200v2 from Cisco.

Design and ease of use
The RT-N66U looks similar to its predecessor, the RT-N56U, with a sleek casing that more resembles a jewelry box than a networking device. The RT-N66U, however, can't disguise its true nature due the external-antenna design, with three of them sticking up from the back. These antennas are detachable but you do need them in place for the router to work.

Also on the back, you'll find four LAN ports and one WAN port. All of these ports are Gigabit Ethernet, meaning you'll also be able to get a fast wired network if you're not interested in wireless. Near these ports are the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) button, the reset button, two USB 2.0 ports, the power button, and a tiny power port. While that may seem to be a lot of things on the router's back, items are well-distributed, so it's less cluttered than you would imagine. Still, it would be a lot better if a few items were moved to the front or the sides of the router, where there are no buttons at all.

On the front, the router has an array of LED lights that show the statuses of the ports on the back, the connection to the Internet, the USB ports, and the wireless networks.

The RT-N66U comes with four rubber feet to make it stay put on a surface, but it's also wall-mountable. It comes with a separate base -- which, interestingly, I couldn't attach to the router until I broke a little piece of plastic off of it -- for keeping it in a vertical position. (That little piece is probably there to keep the base from falling off, but it's just too long, making it almost impossible to attach the base to the router.)

The router comes with a CD that contains setup software that walks you though every single step of how to set it up, so it should be very easy for home users. Savvy users can skip the CD and use the router's Web interface to set it up by pointing a connected computer's browser to 192.168.1.1, which is the router's default IP address. The first time you go there, the interface will greet you with a Web-based wizard with steps similar to those of the desktop setup software.

Either way, you won't have any problem getting the router up and running. I myself was able to do that in less than 10 minutes, including opening the box.

Features
The RT-N66U is an N900 true dual-band router, meaning that both of its bands (5GHz and 2.4GHz) can offer up to 450Mbps, currently the fastest speed of the Wireless-N standard. In order to enjoy this higher speed, your Wi-Fi client also has to support the 450Mbps standard (also known as the 3x3 standard), which most of them don't. Nonetheless, the router works with all existing Wi-Fi clients, including those made for pre-N wireless standards.

To make sure the router offers maximum compatibility, you'll need to change the settings of its wireless networks to Auto and the encryption methods to support both AES and TKIP methods. To do this you will need to use the Web interface, which also allows you to access to all of the router's features.

And the RT-N66U's Web interface is great: well-organized, responsive, and reasonably simple. There are three major parts of the interface that you can access from the left part of the page. The top part is the setup wizard mentioned above, the middle is for General items, and the bottom is the Advanced Settings.

General offers a Network Map for viewing currently connected devices, including those connected to the router via the USB ports. You can click on one of the connected devices to interact with it. For example, you can quickly block a Wi-Fi client or set up a network storage feature of an external hard drive. In the General area, you can also add or change up to six Guest networks, three for each band. Other nifty General features include a Parental Control feature, a Traffic Manager, and management of the router's USB ports.

The USB ports can be used for a lot of functions. As with most USB-enabled routers, you can connect USB external storage devices or printers to these ports and turn the router into a storage or print server, both of which by the way worked well and were easy to set up. With the RT-N66U, these ports can also be used to host storage over the Internet, coupled with a cellular USB dongle so the router can work as a mobile hot spot, and when an external hard drive is connected you can also use the router to manage downloads by itself. The router's PC-less download feature supports FTP/HTTP downloading, BitTorrent, NZB, and eMule and worked well in my trials, except the fact that it doesn't support downloads from sites that require authentication.

Lastly, the Advanced Settings offer more in-depth access to the router's features, some that would be specifically useful for businesses. The most notable feature is the VPN server for creating a secure virtual private network for remote users. You do need to possess decent networking know-how to set up and manage a VPN. The router also supports IPv6, a customizable firewall, and QoS.

Overall the RT-N66U offers most, if not all, of the features you might want from a high-end router, and all the ones I tried out worked very well. I did find a few small bugs, however. For example, via the Web interface you can set the router to automatically check for and update itself with the latest firmware. The problem is this function always says that there's a new firmware version available even when the router has been updated with the latest. For this reason, you'll need to check Asus' support Web site to find out if there's actually a new version of the firmware available.

Performance
The RT-N66U offered stellar performance on the 5GHz band. For the throughput test, which was done at a close (15 feet) distance, when used with 450Mbps clients, it scored about 182Mbps. At this speed, the router can finish transmitting 500MB of data in about 20 seconds. When I increased the distance to 100 feet for the range test, still with a 450Mbps client, the router managed to maintain a high throughput of about 155Mbps.

I also tested the RT-N66U with regular 2x2 (300Mbps) clients and on the 5GHz band and it scored an impressive 110Mbps and 98Mbps for close and long distances, respectively.

It was quite a different story when I moved to the popular 2.4GHz band, however. In this band, the RT-N66U, though not slow, wasn't able to impress me. When used with 450Mbps clients, it scored 55Mbps and 45Mbps for close and long distances, respectively. With regular clients, speeds were reduced to just 37Mbps and 29Mbps.

To make up for this, the RT-N66U offers very long range on both bands, up to 300 feet in my testing. It was also very stable and passed my 48-hour stress test with no problems. During the stress test, the router was set to continuously copy data back and forth between multiple clients, both wireless and wired. Neither of the router's wireless bands disconnected once during this time.

Despite the fact that the RT-N66U doesn't support USB 3.0, its network storage performance was also very impressive, with 132Mbps for writing and 88Mbps for reading over a Gigabit Ethernet connection. These speeds are fast enough for light media streaming and data sharing. The only router that was faster than the RT-N66U in this category is the Linksys E4200v2 from Cisco, which has fewer features than what the RT-N66U has to offer

ANDROID TABLET BRINGING APPLE'S RETINA DISPLAY

Cube U9GT5 Android Jelly Bean tablet touts iPad Retina display

Those Chinese manufacturers sure know how to quickly copy what’s available or popular and pump out cheap devices — especially tablets. What we have here is a popular Chinese tablet manufacturer, Cube, showing off their new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean powered tablet that also rocks a “retina” like 9.7-inch display.

Cube was the first tablet maker to release a tablet with the Rockchip RK3066 dual-core processor way back when dual-core tablets were a rarity, and today they’ve done the same with their new U9GT5 Retina Display Android tablet. This sleek little tablet rocks a similar 2048 x 1536 resolution display as the new iPad (iPad 3), which offers the same 264 pixels per inch as the all new iPad — although surely this won’t cost as much.

Under the hood however is where the large differences are. For one you’ll be enjoying the latest and greatest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean by Google, but the internal specs aren’t all that great. It uses the same aging Rockhip RK3066 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, manages 1GB of RAM, and comes with 8GB of internal storage. While that all sounds relatively nice, it certainly won’t be up to par with most tablets from Apple, Samsung, or ASUS.

It’s safe to say this tablet won’t be getting purchased by us anytime soon, but most likely they’ll be plastered across eBay in the usual Chinese knock-off tablet fashion we’ve seen for years. Pricing on the 8 and 16GB models weren’t made available but most likely they’ll be cheap. Would you buy this, or just opt for the Nexus 7 or upcoming iPad Mini?

HTC LAUCHES NEW SMART PHONES

HTC launches 8X, 8S SMART PHONES

Taiwan's HTC unveiled its first smartphones powered by Microsoft's Windows on Wednesday, in a boost for the US software giant's efforts to break into a market dominated by Apple and Google. HTC and Microsoft previewed the 8X and 8S handsets in New York, boasting  that  they feature"iconic design" studio-quality sound and "incredible camera capabilities."

The companies said the HTC devices would be available from November through more than 150 carriers in at least 50 countries

"We've been inspired by Windows Phone 8 to create new smartphones that give the platform the iconic design and personality it deserves," said Peter Chou, HTC's chief executive.

"Windows Phone has clearly emerged as one of the top mobile ecosystems and is competitive against any other smartphone platform in the world."

Among the carriers participating are US-based AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, Europe's Orange, O2 Telefonica, MTS, Three UK, T-Mobile and Vodafone and Asia-Pacific carriers Chunghwa Telecom, Optus, Singapore Telecommunications, Smartone, Telstra and Vodafone Australia.

The news comes two weeks after Finland-based Nokia unveiled its smartphones powered by Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's upgraded mobile operating system that aims to compete with Apple's iOS used on the iPhone and a multitude of Google Android handsets.

"Pairing HTC's beautiful new Windows Phone 8X and 8S with our brand is a big milestone for both companies," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive.

"Together we are offering customers a clear choice and a truly unique experience. I'm thrilled to take our longstanding partnership to the next level."

The HTC devices have a design based on the Windows Phone Live Tiles and will come in colors including "California blue," graphite black, flame red, and "limelight yellow."

HTC will use and ultra-wide angle front-facing camera that allows up to four people and more to be captured at once, which also allows for high-definition video capture.

It said its Beats Audio "provides authentic, studio-quality sound that delivers the spirit of the original recording."

The phones will have displays of at least four inches, matching or exceeding that of the new iPhone 5, and will use the newest version of Corning's lightweight Gorilla Glass.

top features of android jelly bean

             Top five new features in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

          New OS version enables voice dictation feature no longer needs network connection to

   Google previewed the new version Android 4.1 is nicknamed Jelly Bean,  Wednesday at a conference in       San Francisco for computer programmers.

  The new OS facilitates faster ways to search content on the Internet, share photos between two phones   and more has been promised as a part of the next version of Google's Android operating system for mobile devices.

Here are the highlights of the new android 4.1 Jelly Bean:

            1. Google Now

        One of the new features in Android will be Google Now, which is supposed to get you the right information at the right time automatically, if you activate the feature. If you say "traffic," for example, it will look at your usual commute to work and show you alternative routes if there's a lot of traffic. It will tell you the scores of your favorite sports teams automatically, and it will keep you up to date on the status of your flights if you're traveling.

Google said the Google Now feature will get smarter as you use it more. The feature represents Google's response to Siri, the popular virtual assistant on Apple's iPhone.

          2. Offline voice typing

Android has long included voice dictation feature but with Jelly Bean, Google has taken it even further and it no longer needs network connection to work. Yes, that means offline voice typing. The company's engineers have shrunk the voice recognition engine significantly to make it fit in a phone, unlike earlier when the whole processing used to take place of Google servers.

Offline voice typing will be initially available in English (US), 

Facebook’s “Promote Your Post” Feature – Boom or Bust?

On the heels of Facebook’s IPO bust, they launched a feature that now allows you topromote your Facebook posts so that more of your fans will see it.  (Your page must have at least 400 Likes.)

All promoted posts will show up as a “Sponsored Listing” in your fan’s feeds.

Statistics have already proven that Facebook users generally ignore ads, and GM recently pulled their campaign due to poor performance.

Granted, this is a little different than a regular ad because the post will be showed to people who already “Like” your page, but anytime the word “Sponsored” is used, it has a promotional feel to it.

So I don’t know about you, but this announcement didn’t make me do any happy dances. 

Why Use It?

If you have a Facebook page, you’ve probably already noticed a limited percentage of your fans actually see your posts.  In fact, Facebook admitted that brand page content is only viewed by 16% of your fans on average.

This is due to many reasons – users not logged in when you post, they get lost in the shuffle of other posts and pages people “Like”, etc.

And of course, the skeptic in me can’t help but wonder if they are now ensuring your posts are shown to a limited number of people to encourage more ad spend.

Let’s face it.  At the end of the day, it’s about making money – anything to help their ailing stock, right?

According to FB, not only will this feature ensure more post visibility by giving it a sponsored label, but when your fans interact with the promoted post, it will be shown to their friends as well.

Is it Worth It?

Post promotion has its place, but I wouldn’t just haphazardly use it without a solid plan.

Say you’re having a huge promotion or contest for UK residents only.   Since you can target the post, you may consider testing it out for something like this because you can reach more relevant people.

You also have to consider the fundamentals of marketing.  More views is not necessarily better if you struggle with fan interaction and engagement to begin with.  Just like pay-per-click marketing or any kind of paid advertising, your content needs to convert for the campaign to be successful.

So if your paid Facebook post gives you 50% more views, but your engagement (likes, comments or whatever you’re measuring) shows minimal results, technically that campaign was a failure.

So I wouldn’t throw any dollars into any advertising until you have a real plan in mind and understand that the basic rules of marketing and engagement still apply.

So tell me.  Would you ever pay to promote your posts on Facebook?  Have you tried it yet?  What are your thoughts about this in general?  I’d love to hear from those who’ve tried it.

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HYPER-V VS. VMWARE COMPARISON

                             HYPER-V VS. VMWARE COMPARISON

Choosing the right Virtualization software for your datacenter is a complex task. Microsoft's Hyper-V has become a formidable competitor to VMware, especially with Windows Server 2008 R2.  So we thought we would share our experience via this comparison of VMware versus Hyper-V, the leading server virtualization solutions.

Hyper-V versus VMware - Pricing

If you already have a Windows Server 2008 OS platform, you can download Hyper-V Server at no cost. The only cost is for the System Center management framework. Microsoft includes management of physical and virtual environments along with Hyper-V and VMware.

Hyper-V provides you with migration capabilities: Live Migration is included in Windows Server 2008 R2 at no extra charge.  We are using it and can attest to R2's robustness.  With VMware, VMotion in both Foundation and Standard editions, there is an additional charge if you want to add migration capabilities.

Take a look at the following table, you will see side-by-side the cost comparison of Hyper-V vs VMware. All of VMware feature comparisons use Virtual Infrastructure Enterprise and most of its pricing comparisons use Virtual Infrastructure Foundation. Costs are for five physical servers.  We've made the assumption that you've already paid for the host server OS in this comparison.

	Microsoft Hyper-V Server with
	Existing OS	5 Servers
Microsoft Hyper-V Server		$0
System Center Management Suite		7,520
Enterprise + 2-year SA
System Center Ops Mgr Server		581
System Center Configuration Manager		580
System Center Data Protection		581
Manager Server
Total		$9,262
	VMware ESXi with
	Existing OS	5 Servers
Existing operating system		$0
vCenter + 2-year SA		7,318
2 processer infrastructure Enterprise License + 2-year SA		42,125
Total		$49,443

Hyper-V R2 versus VMware - Feature Comparison
The following chart compares VMware Enterprise core features with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (r2) and System Center Management core features.

	VMware VI	Microsoft WS08
Feature	Enterprise	Hyper-V R2/SMSE
Bare-metal hypervisor	ESX/ESXi	Hyper-V
Centralized hypervisor management	Virtual Center	SMSE (VMM)
VMware and Microsoft management	None	SMSE (VMM)
VM backup	VCB (proxy only)	SMSE (DPM)
VM High availability/failover	Virtual Center	WS08 Clustering
VM migration	VMotion	Live Migration
Storage VMotion	Yes	Not yet
Guest OS patching/management	Yes	SMSE (SCCM)
End-to-end OS monitoring	None	SMSE (Ops Mgr)
Host/VM level optimization	DRS	SMSE (PRO)
Application/service monitoring	None	SMSE (PRO)
Integrated physical and virtual management	None	SMSE

VMI: VMware Infrastructure              WS08: Windows Server 2008 R2                 VCB: VMware Consolidated Backup   SMSE: System Center Server Management Suite                 VMM: Virtual Machine Manager          DPM: Data Protection Manager

Notes:

With Microsoft, virtualization with Hyper-V was built into Windows Server 2008. For heavy Microsoft shops, this means tighter integration with your existing infrastructure and management tools. Since Hyper-V is part of Windows Server 2008, your IT staff will use it seamlessly because they are familiar with the Windows look-and-feel.

Fewer virtual machines, in some situations, can be run on Hyper-V than you can on ESX Server, but Hyper-V is based on Windows Server 2008 and because of that you can run these machines on pretty well any hardware configuration, any hardware configuration that is designed to support Windows. You can only run VMware on maybe dozens or fewer number of server configurations than you can run Windows. That means that Hyper-V can be run on hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of configurations whereas because ESX Server, VMware is a more limited product because of that.

One thing that Microsoft has done very well is that they have tried to add as many management tools for virtualization as possible and of course, the market leader in terms of virtualization management tools is VMware. Microsoft has almost as many tools as VMware in terms of virtualization management.

Microsoft, by the way, just upgraded the number of cores that you can run with Hyper-V by releasing support for Intel’s new 6-core processors, so that means you can now run up to 24 cores.

Microsoft supports a limited number of Linux distributions (today SUSE), so keep that in mind. If you have a wider number of platforms to support, VMware ESX is your choice.

Hyper-V lets you manage virtual and physical environments and uses common deployment, provisioning, monitoring, and backup methodologies across both. VMware’s answer to management is to use Virtual Infrastructure Enterprise and Virtual Center, but even these tools won't allow to manage multiple hypervisors, physical resources or applications. You may also want see how Hyper-V compares to Xen.

Virtualization Consultants from Miles Consulting Corp

Regardless of your choice between VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, our team of Server Virtualization Consultants will help your organization to select the right virtualization technology. They also will help you plan, install, configure and optimize your chosen virtualization platform. Feel free to call us for a free demonstration.