Product Reviews

D-Link has entered the high-speed wireless fray with a complete product range consisting of the DWL-1000AP access point, DWL-650 wireless PC Card and DWL-500 PCI card bus adaptor card. The access point can be wall mounted using the supplied kit for the best reception. D-Link advises that a site survey should be carried out to determine where to mount the access point, yet it doesn't provide any software or instructions to assist. The PC Cards are well built - the aerial assembly is firmly fixed to the card body, with a single LED showing connection status and wireless activity.

D-Link's AP Manager utility scans the network for access points and displays them ready for configuration. Alternatively, you can set an IP address manually by accessing the unit via its MAC address. Web-browser management isn't supported so all tasks must be carried out from the AP Manager. The sparse interface only offers a main window listing discovered units, and each one is accompanied by two tabs showing basic configuration details and WLAN security settings. You can allow all users full access, or implement 40-bit WEP (wired equivalent privacy) using shared keys. Access can also be granted or denied using the MAC address of each PC Card but

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this must be gathered manually.

The PC Cards and PCI adaptors are accompanied by a utility showing signal strength and link quality plus quick access to the network configuration and WEP security settings. Performance is impressive - these are the first wireless products I've tested that have topped 4Mbits/sec. With the PC Card installed in an 800MHz Pentium III notebook running Windows 98, I copied 153Mb of Windows ME CAB files from a networked workstation in 302 seconds for an average of 4.1Mbits/sec. Copying three AVI files totalling 120Mb averaged out at 3.9Mbits/sec. As the SMC PC Cards and access point were to hand I tested compatibility and found that the D-Link cards worked happily with the SMC access point. However, performance testing saw a drop of some 25 per cent in throughput. The only reason I could see for this was that although D-Link states its access point has a 10BaseT interface, the Intel dual-speed Ethernet switch it was connected to confirmed that it had, in fact, negotiated a fast Ethernet, full duplex link. Running the same tests with the SMC PC Cards linked to the D-Link access point saw performance jump back to around 4Mbits/sec, confirming the common factor as the dual-speed network port in the 1000AP.

The D-Link wireless package is very basic in terms of features, documentation and on-line help but it's the fastest so far. That said, performance over Ad-Hoc peer-to-peer connections returned average speeds of around 3.2Mbits/sec. D-Link confirms that the 10/100BaseTX adaptor is a standard feature so, if you want the fastest wireless network access for your mobile workers and have Fast Ethernet implemented, then this is the solution to go for.

Price: DWL-650: £120 (£141 inc VAT);

DWL-500: £160 (£188 inc VAT);

DWL-1000AP: £420 (£494 inc VAT)