D-Link DSL G604T - wireless router

I bought this kit (along with an included DWL G122 USB dongle; see my separate review) as a package from Ebuyer mid 2005 for £58. I had read all of the reviews I could reasdily lay my hands on and thought it was a bargain at this price and to a degree it is. However...

Looking at the specification (see the blurb pasted at the bottom) this is a nice piece of kit for little money. It is firmly in the mainstream of wireless kit still, ...
...(it is well over a year since product release). I've found that in practice it works well...when it works. But to get back to the beginning...

I live in a large two bed apartment with telephone connections in all rooms BUT the one where I wished to place my PC. Not wanting to mess around with wiring up a new telephone line to the room and also wanting to get a network connection to my audio/video kit in the living room, I decided to ... more

I bought this kit (along with an included DWL G122 USB dongle; see my separate review) as a package from Ebuyer mid 2005 for £58. I had read all of the reviews I could reasdily lay my hands on and thought it was a bargain at this price and to a degree it is. However...

Looking at the specification (see the blurb pasted at the bottom) this is a nice piece of kit for little money. It is firmly in the mainstream of wireless kit still, giving 54g performance and DLink are still releasing firmware updates (it is well over a year since product release). I've found that in practice it works well...when it works. But to get back to the beginning...

I live in a large two bed apartment with telephone connections in all rooms BUT the one where I wished to place my PC. Not wanting to mess around with wiring up a new telephone line to the room and also wanting to get a network connection to my audio/video kit in the living room, I decided to go the wireless route. Looking at the retail market palce there are a large number of gadgets to choose from but as always I want a good price/performance ratio as this is my dosh and I don't want to part with it. I wanted:

802.11g wireless LAN, up to 8Mbps ADSL, ethernet switch with at least 2 ports, firmware upgradeable, CHEAP, small enough to hide away.

The dlink met my needs. It comes in a small box with manual on the CD, quick start guide, plug type PSU, small aeriel, telephone line splitter/frequency filter, RJ11 to telephone lead and a short ethernet cable. Set up was straight forward following the quick start guide and it was working within minutes. I used the supplied USB dongle in my PC for the other end of the link. Having established a default connection from PC to the kit I entered the web configuration utility via the default management IP. The version supplied was clunky but a later upgrade improved it. Following the manual I then entered the basic ADSL configuration items as one would for any ADSL modem and saved them into the kit memory. It quickly picked up the connection and I was in business.

Next stop was to go to the Wireless page to configure the security settings for WPA. The firmware defaults to unencrypted; not for me thanks. Options are WEP and WPA with various key options. I went for the more secure WPA and a long key. Once both ends of the link had the key I was in business. I actually used an ethernet wired connection for this part so as not to lose the link during the change. Next was to change the admin password from the default to something not so obvious. There are a host of trricky little technical items that the system allows you to play with, but unless you are a network engineer you are unlikley to ever need to touch them. However, if you read the marketing blurb for this kit you see that it is aimed at the commercial sector so maybe will be used by companies employing such people. Oh, I nearly forgot...turn on the firewall! I tested that it was working by using the facilities offered on the website www.grc.com.

So, is it any good? Yes, it works fine...except when the link mysteriously drops. I've seen this mentioned in various reviews and the cure seems to be illusive. I've upgraded the firmware once and it made no difference. I still have to reboot the box when this happens, maybe weekly. Not the end of the world but still annoying. Range with the supplied stubby antenna is moderate, so I hid the box away under the TV and bought a £5 extension to mount the aerial higher to cover my apartment (having originally discovered that I had a two panel metal radiator in the loine of sight!). With the aerial repositioned I can now get a reasonable signal outside in the car (testing purposes only you understand, I'm not quite that sad yet...until cars have their own PCs...hmm...internet radio on the move...yes please).

Firmware can be upgraded via a two step download from the dlink support pages. I find it a little tricky.

Major gripes: it emits a high pitched whine which I found unbearable until I hid it away in the TV cabinet. If you cannot hear the TV whine (many people cannot as they lose the ability to hear high frequencies) then this won't bother you. Obviously, the occasional connection drop out is annoying to.

So thats it; some annoying features but not enough to want to send it back as it still does all I wanted and for a bargain price. Woulkd I recomend it? Yes, with the reservations expressed (not an option allowed unfortunately)

Features:

* High-speed Internet access
* Built-in high-speed 802.11g wireless LAN
* Built-in 4 10/100BASE-TX Fast Ethernet switch ports
* Built-in ADSL interface with widest range of DSLAM interoperability
* Web-based configuration
* Firewall
* Virtual Private Network (VPN) pass-through support
* DMZ and Virtual Server Mapping support
* ADSL (ANSI T1.413 issue 2, G.dmt Annex A, G.lite Annex A) compliant 

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