NOTE: This article concerns firmware version 1.9.85 and prior ones. Newer versions may suck more/less and address some of the issues mentioned here.

WL-500W Wireless router is Asus’ offering for users wanting the next generation wireless speed today. Based on draft N-specs, the max speed is around 300 Mb and it should skate circles around 11g devices even in average speeds. Some of the features the device has to offer, in addition to N-speeds: WPA/WPA2 encryption, RADIUS-support and wireless bridging. There are four ethernet-ports, but unfortunately none of them support gigabit speeds. For configuration Asus supplies a web-based interface for the unit.

The router also has two USB-sockets, which can be used for several purposes. First of all, there’s an in-built print server, so you can share an USB-printer for network printing. WL-500W also supports webcams, so you can hook up a webcam to an USB socket. This allows you to watch the camera via web browser. There’s also Security mode, which allows attached webcam to act as a surveillance device, monitoring and taking images whenever movement is detected.

External drives connected to USB slots can be shared over the network with FTP-server, and WL-500W also has media sharing features as well, so you can stream the media files on connected storage. One special feature Asus advertises is called Download Master. This is related to an in-built BitTorrent-client the router has. You can assign torrent-files to the router, and the files will be downloaded on connected USB-storage. This way you can download files separately from your desktop computer: just assign a torrent file to the router and WL-500W will do the rest.

I’ve yet to test some of the router’s advanced features, such as webcam support and bittorrent-server. On my network, the WL500 first served as a wireless bridge, so there was no need for the advanced stuff. After a while I changed the network topology, and made WL-500W the primary access point, but haven’t managed to test the advanced features still. No chance to test the webcam-support due to a lack of webcam, and haven’t had time to try out the Download Master-features. I’ll try to check these both out someday, although Download Master being Windows-only limits it’s usefullness a bit.

Based on my initial experience with WL-500W and bridged-mode, I had very mixed feelings towards it. On the other hand, it had a nice feature set, was theoretically very fast and got the job done. On the other hand, it had numerous issues with speed and reliability that severily limited is usefulness. With first few firmware revisions even the wired port throughput was remarkably bad. To be exact, the performance was equivalent to an ancient 14 kbps modem. Or less, since modems at least managed to keep the transfer somewhat steady. The performance on those router ports would start ok, but soon slowed down to a crawl. This issue made WL-500W basically useless for… well let’s say… anything. Even web browsing was out of the question, as the connected computers generally managed to load the first page and choked on the following ones, regardless of the site.

Fortunately, Asus did not give up on device firmware, and managed to fix most of the issues. By the time they released version 1.9.85, the performance had improved and I generally did not experience the same problems the prior versions had. In fact, the operation is quite stable now: the router works much better, both as a wireless bridge and as a wireless access point.

Even though the router is reliable for everyday use, I’ve yet to successfully complete a firmwire update via the web interface. Unfortunately the process is as unreliable as it is easy. To this date I haven’t been able to complete the update without having to go through the device recovery process. Granted, I might be hideously bad at this, but it just doesn’t work the way it should. I’ve even tried several browsers, no difference. After a new firmware is uploaded from the web interface, WL-500W starts the update and ends up with a red light orchestra. The device keeps blinking all the lights and stops responding to anything. In order to fix this the device must be put into recovery mode and firmware needs to be deployed with Asus’ own flash recovery program. Afterwards, everything is ok.

When handling firmware updates using the Asus program, there are no problems at all. Using web update, problems are all you’ve got. Unfortunately, like all Asus software, the Firmware Flash -utility is Windows-only. Linux and Mac-users are out of luck, and have to upload the firmware using other means, such as TFTP.