First of all, there are a lot of reviews listing features, so I'm not going to list them all. It has a lot of nice features, more than most need, but as needs change its nice to have.
One suggestion for anyone, visit the manufactruers site, for this or any router. I did so and read the manual fisrt, it gives more inforamtion than any review or online sale page. This way you know exactly what features you will get (or not) and what will be required in setup before you buy. Also dlink has a nice forum, I checked that out to to be sure this thing was not a dud with lots of failures reported.
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Review for Hardware version A4 - Purchase August 22 2009
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I replaced a previous dlink model WBR-2310 that after two years of perfect operation began to lock up totally. I choose the same model but the second one had poor connectivity, even on wired. My computers keep saying the cable was unplugged and then re-connected. That second one also dropped wireless and reported one of my connections at half-duplex on the same cable that worked fine for over two years. So I decided it was time to upgrade to something newer. At the time I bought the first router I only had wireless-G and 100Mbps computers. Since then I've gotten newer items. My computers and my PS3's all now have gigabit. I also have a netbook with wireless-N and a LD blu-ray player with wireless-N. I choose this model because it could replace not only my old router but also a gigibit switch all in one box. Without changing any settings in my computers, and even switching back to the cable the other router did not like, everything is running smoothly again thru this router. Setup was a breeze taking less than an hour to go thru and set everything from scratch. I used the same IPs and wireless names I had assigned in my other router, and once put in all my items are back online smoothly.
Setup was much easier. One nice thing over the 2310 is that when entering DHCP reservations, you don't need to reboot, waiting 25 seconds, each time. There is a reboot later option, so you can enter all the reservations more quickly and then do one reboot after the last one, that saved me 13 minutes of waiting. The display is nice, as it sorts the connected computers by ip. It does not however sort the reservations listing, they remain in the order entered. It would be nice if they were sorted by name or ip making it easier to review what has been enetered, but that is only a small drawback. I enter them once and rarley go back to look at them. But when performing cleaup to get rid of old devices it would help if they were easier to find.
A bonus was the guest wireless zone. This is like having two wireless routers in one. I was able to set this up, still secure, so I can all guests access. It is isolated from my connection so the guests can't get into my computers. Very nice feature. The only drawback is you can't have the guest zone have hidden ssid and if you use mac filtering, you need to turn if off or put in the mac id when you have guests. I set this up so my house-mate can have internet access and don't have to worry about him having access to my sensative data.
It has good wireless range. I have it set to medium power and get 65MBps connection inside the house, when I go out on the front porch about 35 feet away, and thru one wall and one set of windows, I still get 56-65MBps and very good signal, 4 out of 5 bars still with the router on medium power. If I walk another 30-40 feet away the signal drops and the speed dropped to only 23Mbps, but I don't plan on using my netbook sitting almost in the road. I image it would be great if I had it on full power. My house-mate was able to connect at 65Mbps, where he preiviously was at 11Mpbs on another wireless system. He should now have coverage in his room, which is directly below mine, where before he mostly got no coverage there and had to come upstairs to the dining room to get coverage, on good days. I stream a lot of netflix either to my blu-ray or netbook and the qaulity has been great since the upgrade. I suppose the three antennas help with this, especially since they recommend you put them at different angles, not all three lined up the same way.
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I Got even better performance by selection a set channel, instead of autoscan, and setting the channel width from 20 to 'auto 20/40'. My netbook connection speed increased from 65MBps to 135MBps.
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I don't know what happens when you mix wireless-G and wireless-N, so far i've got 3 wireless-N devices hooked to it, but I do have some other wireless-G items I use occasionally.
There is a usb port which can be used for a shared printer or to use for a usb thumb bdrive to restore settings. Read the manual for that. Nice feature but I recently bought a wireless printer. I guess usb would be faster hookup but then the printer has to be near the router. I'm waiting for the ink supply to run out of my older printer, which since I don't print much is taking longer than expected then I think I'll switch to the wireless printer. But that port can also replace a wireless print server box I had gotten. So this is really 4 devices (wireless router,guest router,gigabit switch,print server) in one box with one power supply. It also supports 'green' where it uses lower power with shorter cables to computers and shuts off unused ports. You can even schedule times to turn the wireless network off, like when you are normally asleep or during work day hours to save power.
Someone mentioned the router overheating, no problem here. Even after streaming for hours. Although I have mine in a very well ventilated spot. I took the stand, flipped it upside down and it fits on the top edge of my lcd monitor, then the router sits on the actual bottom of the stand. There is not a lot of heat from the lcd and this allows good air flow thru the bottom of the router where the vent is near the front and out the top. I had my other router there over two years without problem. Plus it keep the lights within good viewing range and the hole thing out of the way. I used the stands from the old routers to hold other small items up there, like a portable slimline dvd and a usb hub.
I do agree the blue lights are too bright, even in the daytime. I have other blue light items so the blue color is not a problem, but these seems so bright, you can hardly make out the shape they are illuminating. A trick to reduce glow is tape a piece of white papar cut to size over them, it cuts the brightness down but you can still see if they are on thru the paper.
Overall I'm very pleased with this model. Most of the defaults had this working out of the box with little effort or time, it was only the customizing that took a little time, but was very easy.
There is a newer model of this item:
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | (3318) | (364) | (4318) | (2528) | (12948) | (25006) |
| Price | $24.98 | $61.70 | $89.00 | $59.99 | $94.99 | $34.99 |
| Sold By | Blue Mountain Reserve | Amazon.com | Azusa-IoT | Amazon.com | Corewireless | Amazon.com |
| Connectivity Technology | Wired, Wireless | Ethernet, Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi, Ethernet | Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB | Wi-Fi, Ethernet |
| Data Transfer Rate | 300 Mb per second | 3000 Mb per second | 3000.0 Mb per second | 1900 Mb per second | 1200 Mb per second | 1167 Mb per second |
| Item Dimensions | 4.6 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches | 7.8 x 8.5 x 2 inches | 8.82 x 6.06 x 6.3 inches | 8.66 x 6.3 x 3.43 inches | 10.28 x 5.3 x 1.61 inches | 11 x 10 x 3 inches |
| Item Weight | 0.70 lbs | 1.50 lbs | 1.00 lbs | 2.20 lbs | 1.10 lbs | 1.45 lbs |
| Total Ethernet Ports | 5 | 5 | — | — | 5 | 5 |
| Total LAN Ports | 4 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Wireless Communication Standard | 802.11bgn | 802.11ac, 802.11n, 802.11g, 802.11b | 802.11b, 802.11ax, 802.11ac, 802.11a, 802.11n | 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g | 802.11n, 802.11ax, 802.11ac, 802.11g, 802.11b | 802.11g, 802.11ac, 802.11n, 802.11b, 802.11a |
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MD
Good router but doesn't have great range
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 12, 2012
