D-Link Gamer Router (DGL-4300)
What is a “wireless gamer”, you ask? It is someone who plays game wirelessly, of course. While that’s not me, I still wound up with good reason to buy this router and give it a shot.
A week ago, I wanted to turn my Windows XP PC into an entertainment center. My wife put the kibosh on that plan; she didn’t want the PC in the other bedroom. So, still wanting to move the PC and reconfigure my office, I decided to put it alongside my dual G5 PowerMac and use my IOGEAR ADC KVM switch coupled with an Apple ADC to DVI Adapter to mate it and my Windows XP PC to my 20 inch Apple Cinema Display with its USB Apple Keyboard and MX500 Logitech Mouse. I could then move the PC’s computer desk out, move my drawing table closer to my workcenter, and add a badly needed bookcase.
While I was at this, I also wanted to find a way to put the PowerMac, my new iMac, and the PC on Gigabit Ethernet. The most obvious way to do that was to buy a Gigabit Ethernet switch and add it to my router. But I wanted to see if there was an affordable router that also had four 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports. I found it in the D-Link DGl-4300 Wireless Router.
At $150 or so (before rebates), the router is not exactly cheap. But the wireless end of the device supports a packet prioritization routine for games that guarantees better performance and also can be applied to other high-bandwidth hungry applications. Could it help us get better iChat performance? There was only one way to find out.
At Fry’s Electronics, I bought three ten foot lengths of Cat 5e cable and, though I had intended to buy the router at Best Buy where they had a $20 rebate, I picked it up at Fry’s to save some time. In a stroke of good fortune, when I got to the register I discovered Fry’s had a $40 rebate on the unit! Sometimes, God does smile on me.
Setting the router up at home was a snap. I simply unplugged my Belkin router and plugged in the new D-Link and then navigated its administration pages via a browser. One I got past the log-in webpage, I found an Internet Set-Up Wizard (Java-based, I suspect) that I stepped through to get my Internet connectivity back. It took a little while to get that done because I kept missing an entry letting me select my ISP (Earthlink cable); but I finally got it done. I ran some file transfer tests across both the wireless and wired legs, and I will report those in a review of the router to be posted later (in the Reviews section.) Briefly, the wireless portion of the router seemed to be slower at file transfer than my Belkin 54G router, but it did have more range and the Gigabit wired portion of the network was blazingly fast. Interestingly, Gigabit Ethernet transfers were faster between my Gigabit-equipped Macs than my D-Link Gigabit PCI card equipped XP PC and any other machine, including the Macs. I also discovered that, unlike the Belkin, the D-Link router does not pass AppleTalk over the wireless portion of the network, forcing me to reconfigure my Macs and a Hawking print server.
I’ve only done one iChat video session, but the picture was noticeably though not significantly clearer. This was a one-on-one session; if I’m lucky, I’ll get to do a 3 way video conference this weekend.
So far, I’m happy with this purchase.
A week ago, I wanted to turn my Windows XP PC into an entertainment center. My wife put the kibosh on that plan; she didn’t want the PC in the other bedroom. So, still wanting to move the PC and reconfigure my office, I decided to put it alongside my dual G5 PowerMac and use my IOGEAR ADC KVM switch coupled with an Apple ADC to DVI Adapter to mate it and my Windows XP PC to my 20 inch Apple Cinema Display with its USB Apple Keyboard and MX500 Logitech Mouse. I could then move the PC’s computer desk out, move my drawing table closer to my workcenter, and add a badly needed bookcase.
While I was at this, I also wanted to find a way to put the PowerMac, my new iMac, and the PC on Gigabit Ethernet. The most obvious way to do that was to buy a Gigabit Ethernet switch and add it to my router. But I wanted to see if there was an affordable router that also had four 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports. I found it in the D-Link DGl-4300 Wireless Router.
At $150 or so (before rebates), the router is not exactly cheap. But the wireless end of the device supports a packet prioritization routine for games that guarantees better performance and also can be applied to other high-bandwidth hungry applications. Could it help us get better iChat performance? There was only one way to find out.
At Fry’s Electronics, I bought three ten foot lengths of Cat 5e cable and, though I had intended to buy the router at Best Buy where they had a $20 rebate, I picked it up at Fry’s to save some time. In a stroke of good fortune, when I got to the register I discovered Fry’s had a $40 rebate on the unit! Sometimes, God does smile on me.
Setting the router up at home was a snap. I simply unplugged my Belkin router and plugged in the new D-Link and then navigated its administration pages via a browser. One I got past the log-in webpage, I found an Internet Set-Up Wizard (Java-based, I suspect) that I stepped through to get my Internet connectivity back. It took a little while to get that done because I kept missing an entry letting me select my ISP (Earthlink cable); but I finally got it done. I ran some file transfer tests across both the wireless and wired legs, and I will report those in a review of the router to be posted later (in the Reviews section.) Briefly, the wireless portion of the router seemed to be slower at file transfer than my Belkin 54G router, but it did have more range and the Gigabit wired portion of the network was blazingly fast. Interestingly, Gigabit Ethernet transfers were faster between my Gigabit-equipped Macs than my D-Link Gigabit PCI card equipped XP PC and any other machine, including the Macs. I also discovered that, unlike the Belkin, the D-Link router does not pass AppleTalk over the wireless portion of the network, forcing me to reconfigure my Macs and a Hawking print server.
I’ve only done one iChat video session, but the picture was noticeably though not significantly clearer. This was a one-on-one session; if I’m lucky, I’ll get to do a 3 way video conference this weekend.
So far, I’m happy with this purchase.
posted by Andy Foster at
6:48 AM
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