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This is my first experience with D-Link wireless gear and I'm rather pleased with how easy it was to set up. Most reviews of their stuff are pretty favorable but I've heard otherwise word of mouth and on some websites. I have some minor quibbles about the HTTP interface (filter by MAC address could use some labeling and paging through five at a time could get tedious if you have several clients), but overall I'd say it's a pretty good buy for the money. It's not as cool looking as the snow or graphite Airport stations but it definitely does the job. I even retired my old 486-with-linux-on-a-floppy router that's served me well for some 4-5 years now. This is my first experience with D-Link wireless gear and I'm rather pleased with how easy it was to set up. Most reviews of their stuff are pretty favorable but I've heard otherwise word of mouth and on some websites. I have some minor quibbles about the HTTP interface (filter by MAC address could use some labeling and paging through five at a time could get tedious if you have several clients), but overall I'd say it's a pretty good buy for the money. It's not as cool looking as the snow or graphite Airport stations but it definitely does the job. I even retired my old 8MB-486-with-linux-on-a-floppy router that's served me well for some 4-5 years now.

=Di714pComments=

Reviewed by: Gary D, [http://www.wlfnet.org WLFnet] Operative

Review Date: 02/01/2003

Model Number: AirPlus [http://www.dlink.com/products/digitalHome/wireless/11b+/di714p+/ DI-714P+]

Manufacturer: D-Link

Cost: $142.95 from pcstop.com

Operating Systems: All

http://www.dlink.com/products/digitalHome/wireless/11b+/di714p+/images/di714p+Main.jpg

Description

Shopping for a New Base Station

I did a lot of reading up on access points since it's been a couple of years since I'd been in the market for one. I really wanted one with a print server and that narrowed it down to a couple of D-Link products. I went with this model because it offers ~22Mbps transfer speeds if used with D-Link radios -- which I haven't bought yet since I've already got a couple of extra Orinoco cards. The price diff wasn't that much from the older models and the dual tone coloring scheme they've chosen for their more recent products makes it more aesthetically pleasing than the first generation 713.

Connecting

Naturally, another requirement for my new AP would be a model that included an external antenna connector. In this case, I've got dual reverse polarity SMA (RP-SMA) connectors that let me attach my external and still use the one or two dBi dipole that came with it -- or even attach another external. Since the price compared favorably with everyone else, I went ahead and bought D-Link's own 6dBi microstrip patch antenna; the [http://www.dlink.com/products/DigitalHome/Wireless/11b/r60_at/ DWL-R60AT]. I bought it from the same vendor for $27.95.

Setup

This puppy was quick to set up with the browser based wizard. Then all I had to do was copy the MAC addreses from my graphite Airport base station and connect my external 15dBi omni. I bought a prefab pigtail from my friends at HyperLinkTech ($20 + S&H) and thought I was good to go. I hadn't fired up the WLAN on the D-Link since I was still waiting for my cable adapter to arrive. I double checked all my settings that didn't seem to be saving and finally figured that the power cycle cure-all would do the trick. Sure enough, if it doesn't have any antennae connected on bootup then the WLAN setup config won't stick.

The CD that shipped with the unit included an LPR print spool shim for Windows. I tried getting Win2k to work without it without any luck. I remember using an old freeware hack on Win9X but I haven't bothered to look for it since I don't have any other Wintendos on the LAN. My Linux laptop hasn't yet been configured for printing and the iMac may have to just stick to the USB port since I hear it's a hassle to get it working under MacOS 9. When I bought my printer last year I made sure to get one with both a parallel port and a USB port for just this occasion.

Updating firmware

It shipped with the latest firmware so I can't tell you anything about flashing it.

Conclusion

This is my first experience with D-Link wireless gear and I'm rather pleased with how easy it was to set up. Most reviews of their stuff are pretty favorable but I've heard otherwise word of mouth and on some websites. I have some minor quibbles about the HTTP interface (filter by MAC address could use some labeling and paging through five at a time could get tedious if you have several clients), but overall I'd say it's a pretty good buy for the money. It's not as cool looking as the snow or graphite Airport stations but it definitely does the job. I even retired my old 8MB-486-with-linux-on-a-floppy router that's served me well for some 4-5 years now.

And what to do with my old Airport? Maybe I'll see if I can get [http://www-hft.ee.tu-berlin.de/~strauman/airport/airport.html Linux running on it]!

[http://www.wlfnet.org/cgi/mailmerge.cgi/forms/wlf -Gary D]


[CategoryHardware] [CategoryVendor]

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