In Brief

The wait is over. A second generation of draft-802.11n products has finally overcome most of the interoperability and performance problems that plagued the early entries. D-Link's DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router is a case in point. Aside from a faster gigabit switch, it also has a number of valuable new features not present in the original DIR-635 Rangebooster N 650, like Wi-Fi Protected Setup support for touchless encryption, intelligent QoS technology for better VoIP and streaming media playback, and DHCP reservation capability that makes it much easier to connect media servers, Slingboxes, NAS drives, and other network devices. There's also a totally revamped Web interface, with extensive context-sensitive help.

The gigabit switch bolsters both wired and wireless performance, eliminating a bottleneck for many operations, and one of our principal criticisms of earlier draft-n routers. At 1,000Mbps, the wired side of the router can simply handle more simultaneous data than the usual 100Mbps Ethernet, giving it the capacity to handle big file transfers between wired devices as well as the headroom to interface with 300Mbps 802.11n traffic.

At about $100 street, the DIR-655 is priced about the same as most 100Mbps models, making it a great value, although it does cost about $30 more than D-Link's own Rangebooster N. For a top-performing router with all the latest feature bells and whistles, it's hard to beat.

In Depth

If you've been sitting on the fence waiting for draft-802.11n products to hit a reasonable level of maturity before buying, the time has finally come. The IEEE working group approved Draft 2.0 of the standard in March, setting the stage for the Wi-Fi Alliance to start certifying products as Draft 2.0-compliant this summer. It's a reasonable certainty (although not guaranteed) that the D-Link and most other newer n routers will be firmware-upgradable to Draft 2.0 this year, as well as the final standard in 2008.

Risk-averse types should probably wait for Wi-Fi certification, but those experiencing problems with VoIP or streaming video on older 802.11g equipment should by all means go ahead. The D-Link's QoS technology prioritizes video, gaming and VoIP streams over regular data, and the gigabit switch will also vastly increase the speed at which you can back up your computer to networked drives.

With the Xtreme N, D-Link has moved away from its long-standing somewhat clunky router design to an attractive white plastic case. It has the usual trio of upright antennae, indicator lights on the front, and row of ports in the back. There's an intriguing USB port, but sadly it's not meant for attaching printers or hard drives, but rather for automating setup of certain Wi-Fi devices -- something very few users will want or need to take advantage of.

Setup is fairly straightforward, although the CD only works on Windows. Mac and Linux users will need to go straight to the Web utility. While setup is not difficult, and there is plenty of online help, we did find the Web tool's organization lacking. Instead of one area with wizards and a separate area for manual configuration, each function (WAN, LAN, Wireless etc.) has its own wizards and manual pages, so that if you want to use all manual setup, you have click past the wizards on every single page, a big annoyance. Furthermore, every change has to be saved and the router rebooted before going to another page. Fortunately, the D-Link reboots pretty fast.

Looking past the interface hassles, the D-Link has all the routing features most people could want, including Dynamic DNS, DMZ, content filtering, port forwarding and the aforementioned intelligent QoS. One feature that will be new to many users is the ability to reserve DHCP addresses for specific devices. So your laptop will always be assigned the same IP address, for example, even though it comes and goes through the day. This feature is extremely useful for network printers, hard drives, media servers, Slingboxes, game consoles and other devices that you might experience problems connecting to without a known IP address. It gives you the stability of a static IP address, without the hassle of configuring the device for it.

Performance-wise, you certainly won't get anywhere near the nominal 300Mbps with any draft-n router, but speeds slightly over 100Mbps are now possible in ideal conditions. With the D-Link we typically managed about 50-80Mbps in real-world testing with matching adapter cards. However, while we saw faster average speeds with the D-Link as compared to early MIMO routers like the Belkin Pre-N, the Pre-N still has slightly better range. The D-Link could not sustain a connection in the farthest room from our router, while the Belkin can, albeit slowly. Regular 802.11g clients can also connect to the D-Link, and will get much improved range and signal strength. This translates to faster performance, although still limited to 54Mbps. We tested using the mixed 802.11b/g/n mode, with auto 20/40MHz channel selection, which is what we expect most people will use. Performance will be maximized in the 802.11n-only mode, but that would lock out any legacy 802.11g clients, including visitors.

We had no problems with interoperability with several different draft-n and g adapters using the auto WPA/WPA2 encryption mode. When draft-n routers start getting Wi-Fi certified, you'll be assured of interoperability, but it's not too bad now. What we did have trouble with was the Wi-Fi Protected Setup feature, which is supposed to let you automate encrypted connections between devices and the router, but few adapters support it yet.

For a top-performing router with a great feature set and low price tag, it's hard to beat the DIR-655. If you have a need for the speed, both wired and wireless, we no longer see any need to sit on the draft-n fence.