D-Link DI-624 Wireless Router Review

     The DI-624 is the first wireless router I had ever set up for personal use, after having some experience setting up and maintaining a hybrid wireless/wired network for my laboratory using Apple products. That's to say I had some idea of what to expect in terms of set-up and some expectation of performance.

     I found the DI-624 relatively easy to configure and set up to allow networking with our 2 laptops, one wired desktop, and one remote desktop (all Windows-based) and a friend's OS X -based Mac. Setting up passwords or restricting by MAC address were easy tasks, as was updating the firmware and such.

     The problems I do have concern the relatively weak signal I get. My apartment is a single level of a duplex home- there's only one floor. The router is located in the living room, with the office a short hallway (~15-20 feet) away. To be fair, the hallway is offset such that there is not a straight path from living room to office. In any case, the signal in the office is intermittent at best with the stock antenna, with slow speeds and constant connection drops. I ended up upgrading the antennas on both the router (a "remote" antenna from R**** S****) and my wireless card to get acceptable signal quality -- and even then it's marginal, especially if the door is closed. Occasionally I get random drops of signal even with an otherwise "good" quality link- especially if transferring large files over my home network. This is extremely frustrating.

     In the end, the DI-624 is functional, easy to set up, and economical. If its range and connectivity were better, it would be a star. As it is, I find myself thinking about upgrading.