Installation and Setup

With everything unwrapped and out of the box it is time to setup and get started. After plugging button it is time to take our first look at the back panel. Her we see the USB ports, our WAN port and four LAN ports for connectivity.

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The first item on our list is of course the RJ45 ports for wired networking. The WAN port is in blue and the four black ports are for your Gigabit LAN connections. Once everything is plugged in you can see the factory default settings to allow you access to the router.

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The USB ports are the next thing on our list. Here we can plug in an All-in-One printer for sharing over the network or some external hard drives for file sharing. The RT-AC56U even supports 3G/4G hotspots that can be plugged in to the USB to share the data across the WiFi network.

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Speaking of that WiFi network, on the other side of the RJ45 ports along the routers profile is where we find the WPS (WiFi Protected Setup) and WiFi toggle buttons.

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With everything plugged in we can now go to work setting up the router and checking out some of the internal features. You can access the router by either the common 192.168.1.1 address and using the factory default password or by running the quick start on the packaged disk that comes with the router. Once inside we are greeted with our network map. From here we can set up our wireless network and its encryption, check clients and connected USB devices.

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The RT-AC56U also supports Guest Networks which all people to connect to the internet if they are within range but not have access to any data on your internal network. This is a way to cut down on having to keep your network password on hand to give out to any friends that stop by irregularly.

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There are also a bevy of tools within the RT-AC56U that just about anyone can benefit from. AiDisk is a simple to setup FTP server that shares the contents of external hard drives connected to the routers USB ports. Servers center allows you to turn the router into a media center and Network Printer Server makes printer sharing a breeze. The 3G/4G support allows you to use your data from a connected hotspot you may own in lieu of a modem connection should you wish. Download Master is a unique tool that lets your schedule and download files through various means with or without a computer currently running and stores all the data in a connected external hard drive.

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AiCloud allows you to access and stream files and data from a connected USB hard drive through the Cloud Disk function and even access shared drives from any computer on your home network through Smart Access. This can be done through any mobile device with the AiCloud app installed or from any PC with an internet connection.

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The RT-AC56U also has some useful network tools packed in with it as well in the form of Ping, Traceroute, Nslookup and Netstat as well as a Wake on LAN functionality.

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Deb0's Avatar
Deb0 replied the topic: #33292 13 Nov 2013 21:41
If you've been overlooking Wireless AC perhaps its time to check it out.

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