D-Link DWL-900AP+

Ameya Dalvi, Feb 26, 2003 0000 hrs IST

With 2.4 GHz WiFi now 'legal' and 'license-free' in India, it is but obvious to see a whole stream of wireless networking equipment flooding the market

Expert Rating:

Long range, Good transfer rate, Ease of installation

High Price

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EXPERT REVIEW

With 2.4 GHz WiFi now 'legal' and 'license-free' in India, it is but obvious to see a whole stream of wireless networking equipment flooding the market. In US, it has become quite commonplace for people to use WiFi to network PCs at home, or provide mobile users access to the company network via WiFi.

Our primary motive to grab a piece of the wireless action was to check whether this technology has become affordable enough for the home user here in India. So here we go.

Welcome to the world of wireless networking
D-Link being one of the major low-cost network players, we decided to call for their products first, as they are widely available through the channels, and have proven their reliability over time.

The D-Link AirPlus Line of wireless products feature Texas Instruments' silicon chip design. The DWL-900AP+ is an 802.11b-based Wireless Access Point that can be configured to fit into any one of the following five roles - as a dedicated wireless access point, as a point-to-point bridge between two networks (with another access point), as a wireless client (with a patch cable attached to a PC directly) or as a wireless repeater. It also includes an embedded DHCP server that once enabled will automatically assign IP addresses to wireless clients. This wireless access point also features 256-bit WEP encryption for a higher level of security for your data and wireless communications.

The D-Link AirPlus DWL-520+ Wireless PCI Adapter and the DWL-650+ CardBus Adapter, are both fully compatible with the IEEE 802.11b standard making them interoperable with existing 802.11b compliant devices. The functionality of both is basically the same, to act as a receiver (client). Both products include a configuration utility that can automatically discover available wireless networks and create and save detailed connectivity profiles for those networks most often accessed.

You can obtain the detailed specifications for the above products from the D-Link Web site. For that, please check the following links:
DWL-900AP+
DWL-520+
DWL-650+

Installation
The installation of these three products was pretty simple and the driver and software installation was seamless. Configuring the products were as simple as configuring a standard LAN Card. The DWL-520+ and DWL-650+ were accompanied by a hard copy of the instructions manual while the DWL-900AP+ had a soft copy of the manual included on the driver CD. All the product packages included the necessary accessories. To configure the wireless point, you will need to hook it up to a regular Cat5 network, and fire up the remote configuration tool on one of the PCs connected to the same network. This tool allows for configuring the wireless access point's IP Address, connectivity modes, security keys etc. and also allows you to remotely flash the access point with a new firmware.

Both the cards use almost identical software tools that allow for common Wi-Fi settings like network security, connectivity modes etc. The software remains in your task bar as an icon and displays the connection status along with signal strength, connectivity mode and wireless network name.

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Does it deliver the goods?
We connected the network cable to the DWL-900AP+ and used the DWL-520+ with a desktop PC placed just a few meters away and used the DWL-650+ with a laptop placed in a closed room approximately 12 to 15 meters away from the access point. The signal strength was nearly 100% all the time. Moving the laptop to around 50 meters distance decreased the signal strength to about 25%, and the connection automatically downgraded the speeds to 2 Mbps to remain reliable, which makes it come up to 100% signal strength again.

D-Link claims a signal range of 100 meters indoors and 400 meters outdoors and a maximum transfer rate of 22 Mbps while being used with 'AirPlus' compatible devices. Though all this might not seem too good when compared to a wired network, remember it is enough to do most common tasks like Internet browsing (64-1024 Kbps), playing streaming music/videos off another PC on the wireless network (128-2048 Kbps), playing multiplayer games (14-64 Kbps), or copying small files over / printing to a remote printer. Don't expect to be copying full-length movies in under five minutes to another network PC though (which is quite possible on a 100 Mbps wired network).

The price you pay
The price is a major spoilsport for these otherwise brilliant products. The DWL-900AP+, DWL-520+ and DWL-650+ are priced at $90 (Rs. 4300), $70 (Rs. 3350) and $60 (Rs. 2900) abroad which is very reasonable. The pricing here is Rs. 18000, Rs. 11500 and Rs. 8500 respectively which is far from encouraging. If you plan to import these products yourself, you would still end up paying half the local price and that's including customs duties, taxes and other charges. So it's your call.

The technology is fine enough for most users, so there's no question asking whether these products are worth their price (US Price, remember). With technologies getting cheaper by the day, you may wait for the prices to drop and then pick them up. Or, just buy one online from a US site, and get it delivered to your home, it will still be cheaper.

D-Link has revised its prices. The DWL-900AP+ is now available for Rs. 9,500/-, the DWL-520+ for Rs. 6,000/- and the DWL-650+ for Rs. 5,000/-.

USER COMMENTS

how match Distance it will recognized the signals. Please Specify The details. ASAP.

by Raghuram, Hyderabad, on Aug 22, 2008 09:47 AM, Report abuse Reply

This works good.Any idea whether the combo( blue tooth and wifi) are available in India.This is very much in vogue in the US and UK

by Dr Rajeeb Muham, kottayam kerala, on May 19, 2005 12:56 AM, Report abuse Reply

hello rajikka

by jobby, dubai, on Jun 05, 2007 11:50 PM, Report abuse