Testing:

As mentioned previously, the ASUS RT-N56U will be compared to a similarly featured router from D-Link, the DIR-655. The host system (based on a ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard) was configured to use the ASUS PCE-N10 Wireless-N network adapter for wireless tests and the integrated Gigabit network adapter for wired tests. Where one system needed to communicate with another, a Lenovo T410 with a Gigabit NIC was connected to the network, as well.

The first test was to do some real world file transfers across a wired Gigabit network, using the previously mentioned test systems. Two tests were performed, one with approximately 10GB of MP3 files being transferred, and a second test with one 7GB ISO file being transferred. The results are shown below, and in both cases the ASUS RT-N56U provided considerably faster results than the D-Link DIR-655.



The next test is from a benchmarking utility by Passmark. Their PerformanceTest version 7.0 has a Networking benchmark that allow you to gauge the performance of your network speeds. The results shown below are fairly dramatic, and show the ASUS RT-N56U as offering better performance than the D-Link DIR-655, to the tune of 75 points on Passmark's scale.