Design
Housed in a contemporary black and silver case, D-Link's RangeBooster N 650 DSL-2740B modem router sports three aerials to maximise wireless performance. Theoretically the more aerials, the more the workload can be shared for broader coverage, stronger signal and higher througput.
It's great to see D-Link has the common sense to print default IP and log-in details on the bottom of the device to make setting up a little easier — although for security purposes you may want to change these during initial set-up.
Features
While the DSL-2740B is bristling with aerials, what is lacking is a USB port for networked printing. If you want to share a printer across the network, this means you'll either have to share it through your PC, purchase a printer that has a print server and hence Ethernet port built in, or go for another router.
The router, however, does pack in all the features expected on the network management side, including port and IP forwarding, scheduled firewall and Web content filtering (managed via a black/white list), QOS control and WEP/WPA security.
Performance
Our performance testing on wireless routers consists of checking wireless throughput speeds over a variety of distances between a notebook and the router. To test the router it is located at one end of a 55-metre long hallway, while the connection to the notebook is tested at five-metre increments by transferring a 1MB file between it and a wired PC, using the application Qcheck.
This is done until either the 55-metre point is hit, or the notebook is unable to reliably connect. At the 25-metre point there is a "dog-leg" in the hallway, and two results are recorded here — the first one is in line-of-sight, the second and all subsequent points after are obstructed.
Each test is performed at least five times, and the result averaged.
The DSL-2740B appears to be quite sensitive to interference from solid and metallic barriers. Throughput remained at around 20Mbps from five metres to 25 metres, after which it fell away to 5Mbps after 55 metres.
Verdict
If you intend to connect to ADSL2+ over a wireless router and are one of the lucky ones that can achieve a speed between 21Mbps and 24Mbps, the D-Link DSL-2740B won't be able to deliver the full speed to wireless clients. This isn't a show stopper as a large majority of homes are unlikely to hit this speed or even have the option available, but it's something to keep in mind.
Wireless performance was a little erratic — we had better performance from the smaller D-Link DIR-635, tested at the same time.
D-Link provides a generous three-year warranty.
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