After moving from an apartment into a house we found ourselves with computers in different rooms; and they both needed internet access (and printer, and hard drive sharing). I had a D-Link 604 router that I liked for its ease of setup, and the fact that it just worked and I never really had to touch it after setting it up. So, I wanted to stay with the same brand.
Specifications
- Wireless Standards: 802.11b & 802.11g
- VPN Passthrough: PPTP, L2TP, IPSec
- Built in Firewall: NAT with VPN passthrough; Filtering on MAC address, IP address, URL, and domain; as well as the ability to schedule the filters.
- DHCP Server
- Web based setup
- Security: 64 or 128 bit WEP, WPA, WPA-PSK
- Range: Up to 100 meters indoors and 400 meters outdoors. This is pretty optimistic. My two access points are about 20 feet apart with a wall between them and they have trouble connecting. Once connected, it’s fine, but it takes a while for them to find each other.
- 4 Ethernet ports
Installation
Setup was straight forward. My internet connection is through Time Warner Houston, so I didn’t have to worry about DSL settings. Although, I did have to clone my MAC address because the tech that installed the cable modem had to hook it up directly to the computer, and not through the router. He told me it was a support issue, and I can go for that. They don’t want to have to support routers, too. But, he was nice enough to set the modem right next to the router and leave me an extra Cat5 cable.
To get it working on my computer (the one sitting next to the router) all I had to do was plug my computer into a LAN port and the cable modem into the WLAN port. Cloned the MAC address and away I went.
The wireless was a little more difficult. When we bought the router, we also got a matching D-Link wireless card for my wife’s computer. For some reason, the computer refused to recognize the card. So, I spent a frustrating few hours trying to “coax” it, only to break down and exchange for a USB access point. Once I turned off WAP, it worked flawlessly.
Security
I turned off WAP on mine. Figured that there wasn’t anything so secure going across it that it was worth the drop in connection speed that I was getting. But, I can fully admit that that may have been due to me incorrectly setting the access points up.
The one security feature I turned on was blocking any other MAC addresses than the 3 computers that are sitting in the house. That way my neighbors can’t connect to my wireless network. Of course, if the 20 feet between computers is at 60% connection strength, only my next door neighbors would be close enough to be able to connect.
Conclusion
This was a very easy set up. The only snags were due to the access point on the wireless computer, and not because of the router.
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