D-link WBR-1310 Wireless Router

When I bought the D-Link WBR-1310 Wireless Router, it was purchased for a client of mine. He needed access to the internet via his desktop and a newly bought laptop. Unfortunately, he left me hanging, so the router was in my possession (and unpaid) for a few months. I almost forgot about it until I was cleaning up my room!

Then one day, another client called, needing to share her internet access with a desktop and a laptop, too! What are the chances? That's why I've never really fretted over having an extra router since someone always needs one. (I also have several desktop PCI wireless cards if anyone is interested!). So I was off to her house, which gave me some good experience with installing, setting up, and using the router.

In the Box
The box itself is very attractive. D-Link is now using a new color scheme which includes black and orange. It is very eye-catching. This change in company colors coincide with their new redesigned routers and network products. Instead of the old gray and silver boxes, they are now black with a silverish/gray trim. The indicator lights are much more integrated and lights up as symbols instead of plane LED bulbs. Reminds me of those indicator lights on a dashboard of a fine vehicle.

The box includes a sheet about the size of a DVD case, which shows you how to quickly wire the router up. There is also a fold-out cardboard case for a CD that has the installation guide. The inside of the fold-out cardbard gives you space to write down your login, password, SSID, and Passphrase. It also tells you that the default login is "admin" without any password.

Other than that, there's the router itself and the AC adapter. A vertical stand and a 3-foot long network cable was also included. The router is wrapped in a silver anti-static bag, and the antenna is already on the unit. In fact, the antenna is not removable. It can, however, swivel around.

Installation
Installation is pretty quick and easy. It was so quick, in fact, I was out of their place in about 30 minutes, including troubleshooting why their DSL was so slow! Part of this is because the interface is well designed and also very quick to load.

Wiring it up was easy. The included network cable goes from the DSL modem's network port to the WBR-1310 router's WAN port in the back. The existing network cable that was used to connect the modem to the desktop can now be used to connect the desktop to the router (use any of the LAN ports).

As you can see, the physical part of the install is very easy. The hardest part was finding a free power outlet for the D-Link router.

Setting it All Up (Configuration)
The client was using NetZero DSl, which provides a 2Wire DSL modem. It also acts as a gateway, which provides an internal IP already (192.168.1.x). The D-Link provides IP addresses via DHCP that is in the 192.168.0.x subnet by default. This means that once the router was set up and powered up, the desktop was already able to access the internet! Since the IP subnet doesn't match (from the wireless modem and the router), there was no conflict.

Once this was done, I opened up Internet Explorer and typed in the router's IP address (192.168.0.1). The web interface showed up right away with no waiting like most routers! It asks for your username and password on the page itself (not via a pop up dialog box like most routers). This is less intimidating, and very inviting. The web interface follows the black, orange, and white theme from the retail box.

Once logged in, the interface was very responsive and quick! Clicking on the links quickly goes into the requested page without any waiting or pausing. When rebooting the router via the interface, the page will quickly come back. Rebooting the router is very quick.

Setting up the router was also painless, with the easy-to-understand tabs up top and easy sub-catagories on the left side.

The D-Link WBR-1310 router is very feature rich, which includes support for WEP 64/128-bit, as well as WPA and WPA2. It also includes the ability to forward ports, schedule internet access, as well as include or exclude IP or MAC addresses. That last feature is much like a whitelist or blacklist so you can control access to your network, keeping out intruders or just including computers and devices you already know are in the house. There is also QoS (Quality of Service) which allows prioritizing of packets. This means that if you have VoIP phone service, the router will make sure those packets will go through first before any other data packets.

In Use
The desktop PC running Windows XP SP2 was on the internet and ready to go once the router was initially set up. This is good, since it allowed me to quickly go into the router's web interface to configure security and the SSID. This gets rid of the troubleshooting time of trying to get the router to communicate with wired devices.

The internet speed was initially very slow (verified by going to Speakeasy's Speed Test site). Even troubleshooting this didn't take too long. I found out that my client did not use a DSL filter on her kitchen phone. After that was rectified, DSL speed soared back to the paid-for 1.5 Mbps.

Once that was done, it was time to turn my attention on the laptop. It was also running Windows XP, and have a built-in wireless G. Choosing the SSID we previously gave our router would prompt us for the passphrass. After the chosen passphrase was entered (twice - the 2nd one for confirmation), the laptop quickly connected to it. It only took 5 seconds to receive an IP address from the router's DHCP service, and the laptop was quickly on the network. The laptop was able to get on the internet!

Using the internet speed test website, I found that the router was able to transmit the entire 1.5 Mbps bandwidth over to the laptop without any apparent bottlenecks.

Conclusion
While I see that there are a lot of problems people are having here at ePinions, I did not experience any of them. I believe this is due to the fact that it is a newer revision (rev 2), and the firmware that was already on the router was v2.00. Apparently, D-Link listened and fixed all of the issues in this revision of their routers.

D-Link has always been a good company for networking products for home use. They are also usually the least expensive compared to Netgear and Linksys. There are other brands out there that aren't as established as D-Link that will cost less, but as far as reputable brand names go, D-Link is the cheapest while keeping that reputation.

On that note, Linksys is the most expensive while retaining a good reputation as well, while Netgear is on the middle ground when price is concerned. However, Netgear have very spotty reputation. In my experience their older routers work great, but the ones I used eventually fail. Their newer standard routers doesn't work too well (needs to be reset every once in a while), while their Rangemax line are flawless (though more expensive).

In the end, D-Link is the best as far as cost and reputation goes.