First Looks

Noticeably, the ASUS RT-N15 lacks any external antennas; the three antennas are internal and not expandable. The router has a foot which twists out to the sides to stabilize it when there are more cables connected than the WAN and power cables. The slim form factor is pleasing and could probably fit well on a bookshelf.

The sides have downward-facing vents, ASUS embossed and the model name screenprinted. The front of the router has seven LEDs: one for each gigabet Ethernet port, plus WAN, wireless, and power. The rear has a WiFi Protected Setup button, a reset button, the four gigabit Ethernet ports, a WAN port, and a power port.

Administration

Hardware installation was typical. I connected the ASUS RT-N15 to my network using its WAN port and my Dell gigabit switch. I connected my desktop with gigabit Ethernet to the router and pointed my browser to http://192.168.1.1.

I was honestly hoping that rumors of a new UI for the administration panel were true. Unfortunately, this is not the case. It’s the same ugly purple, green, and yellow which has plagued ASUS routers as long as I can remember. However, how often are people messing around in their router’s control panel? Rarely. Although the contextual help is excellent, the organization of the interface could be better.

Quick setup guides the user through the setup process by setting WAN interface settings and configuring the wireless network name and security.

There are a variety of standard wireless settings for the interface, bridging, access control, RADIUS, and WPS. It should be noted that what ASUS calls “bridging” is actually Wireless Distribution System. It’s a technology standard in most routers which allows multiple routers to work together to saturate an area with signal.

The IP Configuration section permits the user to modify WAN and LAN IP settings, as well as routing tables and dynamic DNS through a provider such as dyndns.org or ASUS’s new official one.

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