regarding point 1- im going to speculate that they are recommending hardware they are familiar with and know will work. the asus you are talking about looks like a smart router and might need to have a workaround to play well with others. ive had the hardest time trying to do anything technical with smart routers without just installing something like WRT and forgetting about the smart router stuff. im not sure about this one but it might pull a linksys and store your configuration data somewhere offsite, that would be an issue for me if thats the case as i value my privacy and local control of my hardware. if you feel comfortable working your router configuration it wouldnt hurt to try it