D-Link Wireless N 300 Mbps Home Cloud App-Enabled Gigabit Router (DIR-636L)

by D-Link

• Monitor your wireless network from anywhere and blocked unwanted intruders in real-time.
• Get up to 300Mbps wireless speed- great for video streaming, Web surfing and much more, especially in medium-sized and large homes.
• Four Gigabit Ethernet ports for blazing and wired fast gaming and HD video streaming.
• Wall-to-wall coverage with built-in high power amplifier.
• Setting up your network is as easy as a few clicks in your browser or a few taps on your iPad or iPhone.
• Add devices at the touch of a button.

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4.5 x 3.8 x 5.5 inches ; 9.9 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0081TXIXI
• Item model number: DIR-636L
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,390 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
  • #98 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Routers
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 9, 2012

Product Description

Capacity: 10/100/1000 Mbps

From the Manufacturer

The D-Link Cloud Router 1200 (DIR-636L) lets you monitor your home network from anywhere on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device using the free mydlink app. You can see websites that are being visited, block unwanted devices and receive automatic email alerts when unauthorized connections are attempted. The Cloud Router 1200 also provides fast, high-powered wireless connectivity throughout your home. Wirelessly access your favorite movies, music and photos on your iPhone, iPad or Android device from any connected USB drive. For gamers and HD movie fans, the Cloud Router 1200 has 4 Gigabit ports for blazing wired speeds.

The D-Link Cloud Router 1200 (view larger version; also view all the ports on the rear).

	Key Features
	Peace of Mind Monitor your wireless network from anywhere and block unwanted intruders in real-time. The Cloud Router is the only router in its class with Cloud apps like this.
	Speed Get up to 300 Mbps wireless speed--great for video streaming, Web surfing and much more, especially in medium-sized and large homes.
	Connectivity Four Gigabit Ethernet ports for blazing wired fast gaming and HD video streaming. Wirelessly access files on your iPad or iPhone from any connected USB drive with SharePort Mobile.
	Coverage Wall-to-wall coverage with built-in high-power amplifier.
	Simple Setting up your network is as easy as a few clicks in your browser or a few taps on your iPad or iPhone. Add devices at the touch of a button.

Peace of Mind When You're Away

The Cloud Router 1200 not only provides you with a fast and secure home network, you'll also get the added benefit of remote network management via the Cloud as well. Keep in touch with your network from anywhere with our iPhone, iPad, and Android apps and web portal (mydlink.com).

With mydlink Cloud Services you can:

Manage your home network from any iPhone, iPad or Android device (view larger).		View web browsing history in real time (view larger).	See Connected and blocked devices in real-time (view larger).

Wirelessly Access Your Favorite Videos, Music And Photos with free SharePort Mobile App

With the free SharePort Mobile app and the built-in USB port, you can access your favorite videos, music and photos on a connected USB device wirelessly from your tablet or Smartphone. The interface lets you easily find your files by category, whether you're looking for music, video or documents. With DLNA, the Cloud Router 1200 not only connects to any Ethernet-equipped device, but virtually any device, automatically.

Experience Great Wireless and Wired Speeds

The Cloud Router 1200 gives you fast wireless speeds up to 300 Mbps. It also comes with four Gigabit ports for connecting Ethernet-enabled devices. This allows you to connect up to four entertainment devices for super-fast connections, ideal for your entertainment center. Or give your home office more speed and productivity than you ever thought possible.

Built-In High-Powered Amplifier for Wall-to-Wall Coverage

With its built-in high-powered amplifier, you can enjoy wireless coverage throughout your home with the Cloud Router 1200. Watch videos in an upstairs room, Skype from your home office, or browse and stream from your couch--with the Cloud Router 1200 you can connect wherever and however you want.

 

QRS Mobile application on the iPad (view larger).

Simple Setup. Serious Security.

You can even set up your network from your iPhone or iPad with our free QRS Mobile application. With push-button connectivity and 128-bit security encryption standard, adding devices to your secure home network is as simple as plug and play. The Cloud Router 1200 is Wireless G backwards-compatible.

 

Think D-Link Green

While this may look like your average router, it's not. This is a D-Link Green router, which is as good for your wallet as it is for the environment. The Cloud Router 1200 is designed to conserve energy, protect our environment from harmful substances and reduce waste by using recyclable packaging. D-Link Green devices provide alternatives without compromising performance. To learn more, visit www.dlinkgreen.com.

Key Specifications PC compatibility: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, or Mac OS X (v10.4) Security: Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2); WPS Wireless speed: Up to 300 Mbps Port(s): 4 Gigabit Ethernet, 1 USB 2.0 IPv6 certified: Yes Dimensions: 4.37 x 3.66 x 5.71 inches Warranty: 1 year, limited; 24/7 basic installation support

What's in the Box

D-Link Cloud Router 1200 (DIR-636L); Ethernet cable; power adapter; quick install guide

Product Description

The D-Link Cloud Router 1200 (DIR-636L) provides total network management in the palm of your hand and high-powered wireless connectivity for your home.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent but nothing special July 5, 2012

By Anonymous VINE™ VOICE

Size Name:10/100/1000 Mbps|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The D-Link DIR-636L is a basic, single-band (2.4) Wireless-N router that would be well worth considering at a lower price, but its high price makes this relatively bare-bones piece of hardware hard to recommend despite its full-featured software. The router's lack of dual-band support is a major deficiency for its price point, and it does not appear to be a very high-performance or high-reliability unit, exhibiting occasional lag and one crash in my first day of testing.

The router installs simply (though it somewhat unnecessarily asks to be connected to the Internet before you use its installation and configuration "wizards," a poor security practice). It is easy enough to configure all its basic features through its Web interface, especially if you avoid the "wizards" (which force some poor security choices on you) and go straight to the manual configuration interfaces. Though the web interface is not especially well documented or self-explanatory, it does boast some nice features, like QoS traffic shaping, a storage server, and port forwarding, that you might not expect to find on such a basic piece of hardware. It also has a gigabit WAN uplink, which is nice for future-proofing in the event of a high-bandwidth home fiber upgrade, though I'm very skeptical that this low-end router would be able to saturate a gigabit connection in any case.

The DIR-636L also boasts "cloud" monitoring and access features, but after the privacy fiasco associated with Cisco's "cloud" routers I elected to leave this off -- and D-Link deserves praise for making opting out of their "cloud" a clear and easy choice rather than forcing it on users like Cisco/Linksys did. Still, it's a bit ominous for privacy and security that these manufacturers' cloud-based services are asking users (many of whom may not understand the tradeoffs involved) to irrevocably consent to the company's remote monitoring of our home networks.

Users seeking support for alternative firmware such as DD-WRT or Tomato should also be aware that the DIR-636L is based on a Ralink chipset, rather than those firmwares' preferred Broadcom chips, so it is less likely to be supported in future builds.

A few days' use show the DIR-636L to be basically functional, though it needed to be restarted several times during configuration before it would work properly, and once more after a first-day crash. But at this price, a router should be less laggy (DNS forwarding seems particularly prone to hangs), higher-speed, and more reliable, so this is not my first recommendation. Instead, for a low-cost unit, try a Linksys E900 instead -- its firmware is a bit less fully-featured but it'll be at least as reliable -- or pick up a used/refurbished E3200 or WNDR3700 and install DD-WRT firmware for far more capable hardware, better reliability, and more configurability at roughly the same price as this unit.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars D-Link Wireless N300 Router November 9, 2012

By William J. Mazzacca

Size Name:10/100/1000 Mbps

I read mixed reviews on this product before I bought it and, I should say at the outset, I am not using any of the cloud services offered with this router. I use this router purely to access the internet and for remote work activities.

As a pure wireless router, it is working quite well. And, silly as it may sound, I like the fact that the router came with password protection enabled. In fact, the password was taped right to the router so I was up and running in minutes.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A fast router, with bad documentation and questionable cloud service September 11, 2012

By R. Hammer VINE™ VOICE

Size Name:10/100/1000 Mbps|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I'm not new to the router world and have had many of wireless routers, from the 802.11b's, a's, n's, MIMO, etc.

PROS: This DLINK DIR-636L router packs a powerful punch in terms of wireless signal. It's fast and has great coverage throughout my house (compared to some of the 802.11n Linksys ones I have) This is also one of the few routers I've seen with a power button. Now I know the jury is out on having a power button on a critical piece of networking equipment, but having done multiple power cycles in the dark before, having a simple button is nice.

CONS:

There seems to be some lack of Q&A on the documentation for this product as the technical writing seems flawed by D-Link. First off, there is NO USB jack on this product. The jack they reference is a Ethernet jack. Secondly, there are discrepancies between the manual and the setup wizard on the computer. I was thrown off a little bit by this as the setup wizard does not follow the traditional setup ease of most wireless routers. Took a manual download of the instructions from the D-Link website to sort this out.

Most importantly, and the main feature of this router is the CLOUD service. Let me tell you, that this was the biggest cause of frustration from my perspective. D-Link's "mydlink" service is terrible. The access portal rarely recognized my router (even after verifying that it was working). There is no internal network browsing (once you can connect to the router), there is no network monitoring capability, only a mydlink.com site that points to a mobile app it wants you to install on a mobile device. What about when you're on a laptop on the go?

All in all, I'd say this was a pre-emptive attempt by D-Link to cash in on the "cloud" buzz and I would not recommend this router.