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I brought this as an immediate replacement for my broke down router. This has been working well so far. Now I need to upgrade to provide decent coverage for the whole house. I use this as a client bridge in the worse reception part of the house. The old one I got is version A1, with a well tested DD-WRT version for it. Had a hard time with the manual because I am not interested in "client" as such. I'm interested in bringing wifi to my rooms with poor reception.
Client actually means like having a wireless ethernet cable between your main router and this "client". Once setup, you can have 5 ethernet outlets on the "client" box, good for TV, blue-ray player, media box, etc. "Bridge" need a little bit more setup so all connected devices on any router are on the same network, so for example one media server can beam content to all wired or wireless devices. Because the external antenna on this box is much better than any portable devices, you can put it at poor reception areas but still get decent reception from the main router wirelessly.
This box alone cannot be a wifi repeater, that is, providing wireless signal itself. Actually, it can do with a virtual access point, but you will have two interfering wifi signals on the same channel. If you put them at some distance apart you can get it working with decent data rates.
But I decided to get one more box to plug in the client bridge as a wireless access point, therefore completing a repeater. Unfortunately I get the B1 version that uses a different chipset, and the DD-WRT version for A1 is highly unlikely to be compatible.
There's an Open-WRT version around that is compatible with B1. But I can complete a repeater with the B1 original firmware. Of course it worked right away if you plug the WAN port to the client bridge, but it will be somewhat isolated from the rest of the network. For bridging, You connect the client bridge and B1 box using their LAN (not WAN) sockets. Set the IP address to be 1 higher than the client bridge. Repeat some of the bridge settings such as disable DHCP and set the gateway to be the IP of the client bridge.
Also, you don't need to set static IP on your computer in order to setup your boxes. After connection, you check the IP on your computer and make sure you don't use it for the other boxes on the current session. Same security setting.
Setup a virtual SSID on your main router to be the same as the SSID on the last B1 box. All channel selection to be AUTO. Since you have the same SSID on two channels in the same network with same password, handover should be automatic. Seamless? probably not so much. Firstly, kids don't need to deal with connections. Once connected, the device will connect to one access point or the other. If you are browsing, you probably won't notice anything if you walk around. For video they have pretty long buffers if you break connection momentarily. I think the only case need seamless handover is probably during voip calls. But only if you walk across the entire house during one call.
Original review:
My old D-Link wireless router retired after many years of use. All my devices are wi-fi G, the older standard most routers implement. But it's good to know this wireless router supports the newer wi-fi N standard, which can be many times faster if you have a lot of antennas. The DIR-601 has one so the maximum you get is, from the data sheet, about 300 MBit/s, 4X that of G, at 54 Mbit/s.
I got mind under $20. Before this, I got one cheaper elsewhere but they send me a super cable accessory. They mixed up the item on sale. My main requirement is for my old G devices. It doesn't matter as long as it works for at least a couple of years more. Now it's fast enough for Netflix. When I upgrade to N, probably I may want higher rates with multiple antennas.
My other requirement is a firewall box, isolating my computers from the Internet.
Now after 2 months of use, I expect it to continue working for years.
Another reason I picked D-Link is because my old router is D-Link. I hope the software is the same so I don't need to read or try anything new. But the user interface is rather different, or the organization of the pages are somewhat different. Of course, there are the more sophisticated firewall settings.
But basically the setup wizards will do the general things. Your applications will do the rest, such as firewall settings.
