Review: The Wireless BitTorrent router

Written by Ernesto on August 11, 2006 

I heard some stories about the Asus WL-700gE, aka “the BitTorrent router” a couple of months ago. It was announced as the ultimate gadget for torrent freaks, so I decided to buy one as soon as it was available. That was three weeks ago.

After two weeks of extensive testing I think I’m able to write a proper review (of the bt part). Lets start with a general overview of the specs:

BitTorrent router asus
  • 160GB Built internal 3.5″ Hard Drive
  • 3 USB 2.0 ports
  • Web/FTP Server
  • Photo Album/Message Board Wizard
  • Auto bandwidth management (downloading + web browsing)
  • Plug ‘n Share USB Storage + RAID mirroring
  • iTunes Server + UpnP AV Server
  • Power usage (approx) 30watts peak (restarting router) and 15watts “idle”
  • and a lot more

    The router comes with a setup utility, thus configuring the router is pretty easy. The goal of this article is to review the BitTorrent related functionalities of the router, but I have to say that the router does pretty much everything it promises. To name a few things:

  • The Itunes server works like a charm, and is very useful if you want to access your mp3 collection with other gadgets or computers.
  • The FTP server allows you to create multiple users with separate access levels
  • The plug and play USB backup works like it should.
  • The Wireless signal is excellent, it has no problem to bypass the two steel-enforced concrete floors in my house.
  • asus BitTorrent

    But now the BitTorrent part. The Asus WL-700gE comes with a “download master” utility that supports ftp, http, and BitTorrent downloads. There are two ways to download torrents, you can upload a torrent with the “download master” utility on your pc or you can access the “download master” in your web browser.

    The progress of the downloads can be monitored in the transfer panel of the download master. It lists the filename, progress, size, speed and ETA. The web-based download master has a few extra monitoring options (peers!, download/upload).

    Download Master

    dl master

    Web Download Master

    dl master

    The transfer monitoring is quite buggy, the speed and filesize update every 10 seconds or so, but the torrents have the strange tendency to stop downloading if you watch the transfer progress for more than a minute. They resume downloading as soon as you minimize the window.

    And there are more bugs. About 50% of all the torrents I paused, never resumed after the pause. This means I had to redownload all the data.

    The overall speed is ok, and it shouldn’t matter too much, since most people will use it to download torrents overnight.

    There is not much to tweak. The only option you have is to set the time the torrent should seed once the download is finished (default is 1 hour). Too bad they didn’t include a ratio seed setting.

    Conclusion:
    Overall I would say the router performs very well and is worth the money (I paid approximately $300). However, the BitTorrent client is very buggy and limited. It works but it could and should be improved significantly. The router would not yet replace my regular torrent client, but it does the job at night.

    pro’s:

  • torrent downloads work (sometimes)
  • all the other features are sweat
  • con’s

  • transfers stop at random
  • files disappear
  • tweaking options are limited
  • Previously: Yet another social BitTorrent client

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    42 Responses

    Pages: « 1 [2] Show All

    26 Dec 08, 2006 at 19:35 by Magus32

    I want to give 100 files and start to download one and when it finish then continue to next one but only one. 100 files start download 1st file when it finish continue to 2nd file not 1st,2nd and 3th simultaneously and then continue to 4th,5th and 6th. If someone knows how please tell me

    27 Dec 13, 2006 at 17:18 by Idomeneas

    I bought this thing
    its the bigest bullshit in the planet!!!
    The only thing that works on it
    is the leds…
    As about the support from asus
    invisible…
    Spend 300 euros for nothing…

    28 Dec 14, 2006 at 13:44 by Magus32

    [quote comment="29491"]I bought this thing
    its the bigest bullshit in the planet!!!
    The only thing that works on it
    is the leds…
    As about the support from asus
    invisible…
    Spend 300 euros for nothing…[/quote]
    Please tell me something about that router if there is a limit on the number of files that I can download automatically with these routers and how many files can be queued

    29 Jan 02, 2007 at 10:01 by vteo

    Hello Killingfrost,

    How did u get yr WRT54G to have bittorrent installed? Any links? Tried finding the web but nothing.

    vteo

    30 Jan 20, 2007 at 04:43 by mr.awesome

    I just bought one… waiting for shipping. Does anyone know what kind of code the torrent client uses?? Will oink ban me with their cheat detection for using a shady client if I use this for bit torrent? As far as problems go, I am not concerned. I currently own a linksux router and could shit a higher quality product than that thing. Besides, I have the uncanny ability to make anything work including my POS linksux. Anyway, does anybody have detailed info about specs on the torrent client???

    31 Apr 09, 2007 at 11:41 by Bhavdip Bhayani

    The router works great, it has a built in server and a shity bit torrent client called “ctorrent” which runs on linux platform. There has been numerous reported problems with the bit-torrent. Although there is a solution which worked me and many other people. What i did was added an update bit torrent client to replace the one that the router comes with. The bit torrent client i currently have on my asus wl-700gE is called “enhanced-ctorrent” and it works great and fixes all the problems that it has with the built in bit torrent. If you want to learn how to replace the bit-torrent client please e-mail me at bhayani1569@sbcglobal.net (THE ROUTER IS A GREAT TOOL! I LOVE IT)

    32 Jun 05, 2007 at 02:53 by no consultation

    contrast repeatedly imitative queueing digression?Moldavia Godot

    33 Jul 05, 2008 at 07:51 by Businessesatoz.com

    http://www.Businessesatoz.com Orange County Web Design and Web hosting

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