This evaluation first appeared in subject 355 of PC Pro.
Asus’ ExpertWiFi product household speaks to small businesses and shops requiring an entire community safety resolution that’s reasonably priced and easy to deploy. The EBR63 is a primary instance: this deceptively small router groups up dual-band Wi-Fi 6 providers with a heap of gateway safety measures and delivers all of them for under £125.
On the wi-fi aspect, the EBR63 has an AX3000 ranking derived from claimed speeds of 574Mbits/sec on its 2.4GHz radio and a couple of,402Mbits/sec on the 5GHz radio, with the latter supporting high-performance 160MHz Wi-Fi 6 channels. Nonetheless, the EBR63’s swap is barely endowed with gigabit WAN and LAN ports so that you gained’t see the complete efficiency potential of its Wi-Fi 6 credentials.
A constructive takeaway is help for Asus’ AiMesh know-how so you should utilize any suitable Asus wi-fi gadget to extend wi-fi protection with as much as 12 mesh nodes. You may as well create as much as 5 wi-fi SSIDs and current customized captive portals to friends and clients.
The EBR63 is a compact plastic unit that may be wall- or ceiling-mounted utilizing the 2 holes in its rear panel. It additionally has a flip-out desk stand, however we wouldn’t advocate utilizing this in a busy surroundings because it’s fairly flimsy and, with the router solely weighing 415g, it might simply get knocked over.
Web redundancy is current, with the twin WAN characteristic in a position to apply failover or load balancing throughout two web connections utilizing the WAN port and a LAN port of your selecting. A fast repair in case your fundamental web connection goes down is to attach a mobile to the EBR63’s USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port and use it as an prompt web backup.
Deployment is a breeze utilizing the ExpertWiFi cell app. With this loaded on an iPad, we related it to the router’s safe default SSID and adopted a wizard to activate the gadget and replace its firmware.
Administration decisions abound. The EBR63 presents a well-designed net interface, which we used to create extra wi-fi, or self-defined, networks. That is properly dealt with as you select from an inventory that features worker, portal, visitor, scheduled and IoT choices, then fill within the fields introduced and select WPA2 or the safer WPA3 encryption. The “Situation Explorers” makes this even simpler as you select an surroundings comparable to workplace, espresso store or house working and it’ll current you with probably the most acceptable settings.
Safety features are fairly exceptional contemplating the value. The SPI firewall could be custom-made with as much as 128 guidelines, whereas the Development Micropowered AiProtection Professional service blocks malicious websites, stops contaminated programs from accessing the community, gives intrusion prevention providers (IPS) and generates safety evaluation stories.
Net content material and app filtering could be utilized to chose shoppers the place you tick packing containers subsequent to any of the 4 classes, select a found gadget from the drop-down checklist and add a brand new rule. VPN choices are excellent, as Asus helps PPTP, OpenVPN, IPsec and WireGuard VPN servers, whereas the VPN Fusion characteristic creates safe connections for units that may’t run VPN shopper software program. As well as, high quality of service (QoS) options are dealt with by Asus’ Adaptive QoS, which prioritizes site visitors from completely different apps and actions utilizing a customizable checklist.
Regardless of solely having gigabit ports, the EBR63 delivered respectable speeds in our real-world assessments. Utilizing a Dell Windows 11 Professional workstation outfitted with a TP-Hyperlink Archer TXE75E Wi-Fi 6/6E PCI-E adapter, we noticed close-range massive file copies between the shopper and a LAN-connected Home windows server return a rock-steady 112MB/sec, dropping to 89MB/sec with the router positioned ten meters away in an adjoining room.
The ExpertWiFi EBR63 will attraction to small companies that need all their community providers and safety in a single, easily-managed gadget. The gigabit ports do restrict wi-fi efficiency however general speeds are spectacular nonetheless, and Asus delivers an unbelievable vary of safety measures at a really tempting value.