A Closer Look
I’m just going to say it, the RT-N56U is the most attractive piece of networking equipment I’ve ever seen. When people come over to my house, the RT-N56U immediately catches their eye. They promptly inquire, ‘what is that?’. I tell them it’s a router, then they proceed to call me a liar. There aren’t any antennas sticking out, no stickers with bold writing that say “2.4GHz Wireless N”, or anything crazy like that. If Giorgio Armani were to pick a router to put in his house, the RT-N56U would be it.
There’s six blue LEDs on the front of the unit that shine like dim stars in a night sky. The ASUS logo on the bottom left, and that’s really about it. One thing you might want to invest in are flat ethernet cables. The RT-N56U comes with one flat ethernet cable, but you’ll probably want more so you don’t have your standard rounded cables sticking out from the side of the device.
There are four local gigabit ports, one WAN port and two USB 2.0 ports. Each port does have a connection and activity light. Some people might find these lights annoying since the rest of the unit is so sleek, but I barely noticed them.
The back of the unit is slanted, so if you don’t want to stand it up, it can also lay down. The back is also home to the device’s default IP along with login/password. So you don’t even have to look in the manual or quick start guide to get going, just check the back of the device.