Product Reviews

TP-Link is a well-known manufacturer of wireless kit in China, but the TL-WR642G 108M Wireless Router is the first product that we've seen in the UK. It's a standard wireless router with no ADSL modem, and it has one of the most attractive prices for a wireless router that we've reviewed.

Configuration is performed through the router's web-based management page. There's a quick-start wizard to guide you through the basic configuration, but it doesn't prompt you to turn on security. We also ran into some

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problems with the wireless configuration, as turning on the 108Mbit/s mode forced the router to operate on channel 6. While the supplied TP-Link wireless adaptor worked with this setting, our Centrino notebook kept losing the signal. To get it to work we had to turn off the 108Mbit/s mode.

This didn't turn out to be a bad thing, as throughput was good when we tested with our Centrino notebook. There was quite a drop-off in performance at far range, but we were pleased to see that we still got a throughput of 6.45Mbit/s at 25m.

Switching to a matching TP-Link 108Mbit/s wireless adaptor (USB, PCI and PC Card adaptors are all available for around £12) got similar results, but a slightly faster throughput of 7.25Mbit/s at 25m.

The TL-WR642G has all the usual features you'd expect to find on a modern router, including port forwarding, UPnP and a firewall. It's a shame that we suffered problems with the 108Mbit/s mode, but the TL-WR642G proved itself to be a good router with excellent range. For this price it's a bargain if all you want to do is share an internet connection.