Review: D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N wireless router

D-Link's latest Draft-N router, the DIR-655, improves on the previous DIR-635 by adding four Gigabit Lan ports.

Theoretically, using standard 10/100Mbits/sec Lan ports on a Draft-N router capable of up to 300Mbits/sec creates a bottleneck.

However, in practice you'd be very lucky to exceed 100Mbits/sec using Draft-N.

Of course, should you have other Gigabit Lan kit the DIR-655 will certainly make full use of them.

Externally the DIR-655 could have looked identical to the slower DIR-635, but that was clearly unacceptable so D-Link has given it a styling job with a case that is mainly white with a black band around the middle.

The three Mimo antennae are also white, and the overall result is highly questionable: we fear the nausea-inducing bright blue activity LEDs won't be appreciated by all.

Hopefully you can ignore the looks and concentrate on the speed of this router. The Atheros Xspan chip is certainly very fast, but there’s a chance that it will be overwhelmed by heavy use so D-Link, for the first time, uses Ubicom Streamengine technology to prioritise certain types of data.

This ensures that VoIP, video streaming and online gaming get a steady stream of data packets, while web browsing and downloads may take a back seat if necessary to ensure quality of service is maintained.

Setting up the router is quick and simple thanks to D-Link’s Click ‘n Connect setup – this uses a wizard in the configuration screen. However, this screen isn’t especially well laid out so simple tasks, such as disabling wireless, take longer than necessary and any changes require the router to be restarted.

You get the same Click ‘n Connect software with the matching DWA-645 Rangebooster N 650 PC Card, which costs a princely £54.

There’s a USB2 port on the back of the router that accepts a memory key to speed up the configuration with Windows Connect Now. Previously this required Windows XP SP2, however the DIR-655 sports a ‘Works with Window Vista’ logo so it’s safe to say XP SP2 or later.

At short range with no encryption enabled, we managed to get TCP transfer speeds of 47.1Mbits/sec, which is pretty impressive. This dropped to 40.8Mbits/sec with encryption turned on and fell further to 26.2Mbits/sec when the signal had to travel through two walls.

It's important to stress that wireless speeds vary wildly, depending on the environment, so what you end up achieving may be very different to what we experienced.

Despite the dubious styling and annoying blue LEDs, D-Link's latest router is a cinch to set up, includes Gigabit Lan and, in our tests, achieved some impressive wireless speeds.