Asus WL-600G

Over the last five years, the number of people using the Internet in India has increased exponentially. This trend will not change anytime soon, with the expectation that within this year we will see a fantastic 60 percent growth in broadband use in the country. As the no of Internet users begins to rise, so does the spread of technical knowledge. A lot of users today don’t only use the internet for just surfing or chatting. They use it to play multiplayer games, use it for internet telephony, and other tasks. At the same time the growing affluence of the Indian middle class, has lead to a scenario in urban centers where many households have more than one PC. In such households, you will find commonly that there is one primary desktop and users with individual laptops.



In such cases the need for faster forms of broadband Internet has arisen. This has been answered to a large extent by public sector companies such as MTNL and BSNL, who have stepped up and have started offering broadband Internet at attractive prices using the ADSL2+ method of broadband delivery. Here the Internet is delivered over your POTS (Plain Old Telephone System). Yes! we are referring to the copper wire that your landline is connected to. Another question that routinely pops up, is how best to share this Internet connection in a household, after all it is not feasible to have individual connections for every user. This is where Wi-Fi comes in usable. As it has become common-place with virtually all laptops shipping with support for it, Wi-Fi makes it possible to share the Internet connection without any issues.

Keeping all this in mind networking companies like Linksys, Netgear, D-link and now Asus have started offering all-in-one solutions based on the ADSL2+ platforms. These solutions are typically routers that ship with support for ADSL2+ technology, have inbuilt Wi-Fi access points, double up as 4 port network switches, have a STPI firewall, QOS prioritization for VoIP, AV streaming and gaming and in some cases can even act as virtual servers for print sharing.

One such device which we are going to be reviewing today is the ASUS WL-600G which Asus claims offers virtually all the points that we have listed above. Would it be able to keep up with the competition and deliver on all fronts? Read on to find out.

One thing I like about ASUS is that in any PC related device they make, they take the trouble of making it look attractive. The WL-600G is no exception to this as it ships in a nice off-white/silver body, that looks neat and is really an improvement over the dull grey/black combos that other manufacturers prefer. The only downside here is the fact that India being a dusty country, this color combination will attract a lot of dust and will require it to be cleaned a little more often.

In terms of physical size and dimensions the WL-600G is a big boy. Compared to its direct competitors like the D-link 604T and Linksys AG241, the WL-600G is a lot bigger. This does create a problem as it makes it difficult to simply install the router in one corner, configure it and forget about it. Due to its size, one has to either build a bracket for it or install it on the top of our PC.