D-Link DSL-2740R review

D-Link’s DSL-2740 provides everything you need to get your internet connection up and running, even if you’ve never done it before and even comes with two ADSL microfilters. The disc-based installation wizard is very easy to use and provides a perfect guide to connecting your router, but there’s also a setup wizard built into the router’s web interface.

If you opt for the web setup tool, you’ll be guided through entering your ADSL provider’s connection settings, but it won’t prompt you to secure the router’s open wireless connection. The latter is easily done via the Wireless Setup tab in the web interface, where another wizard will guide you through creating a wireless security key. Alternatively, there are manual configuration screens for everything.

You can only disable channel bonding in the router’s advanced wireless settings, but we were pleased to find that doing so wasn’t actually necessary to ensure a more stable connection. Instead, and somewhat unusually, we found that the router gave us similar speeds but a slightly more stable connection with channel bonding enabled.

Other features in the Advanced settings section of the interface will be of less use to most users, such as MAC address filtering, VLAN configuration and DNS configuration, including dynamic DNS via DynDNS. Port forwarding is one of the few really useful options available here, but we were surprised to find that only a maximum of 12 ports could be forwarded, although this is more than fine for most people. There is a firewall settings section, but there are no configurable content filtering options, such as URL filtering or port blocking.

Although the DSL-2740R is somewhat short on advanced features, it’s no slouch when it comes to performance, achieving a very respectable 44.1Mbit/s at 1m, 42.7Mbit/s at 10m and 20.3Mbit/s at 20m in our tests with a Centrino 2 laptop, with even faster results at 1m and 10m using D-Link’s own DWA-160 wireless adaptor (£50).

With good speeds, a low price and an interface that’s perfect for beginners, this ADSL modem router is a great buy. It’s a couple of pounds more expensive than Linksys’s WAG160N-UK, which has similar throughput using our Centrino 2 laptop, but that’s the only thing keeping it from a Best Buy award.