D-Link DIR-825 review

D-Link’s DIR-825 is quite expensive, but you get a lot for your money.

For starters, it has a Gigabit Ethernet switch, so you can share files at lightning speed over a wired network. More impressive is that this router is dual-band, and you can use both 2.4GHz and the more reliable 5GHz channels together.

The installer quickly takes you through setting a password, naming your networks and configuring your wireless security settings. It defaults to WPA encryption, auto-generates a password, and warns you against using wireless without security. Finally, it offers to optimise channel bandwidth for greater speed, which turns on channel bonding. As this uses two channels, we recommend that you stick to single-channel mode to avoid interference.

The installation disc also contains D-Link’s SharePort utility, which lets you access devices connected to the router’s USB port. Our USB drive was detected and connected as if it were plugged directly into our PC. Unfortunately, the USB drive can’t be used as a NAS device and can be mounted by only one user at a time. The port can be configured as a WAN connection using a 3G dongle. The router can’t be configured to switch to the 3G connection automatically if there’s a problem, though.

The web interface is easy to use, with helpful information in the sidebar about what everything does. Features include DDNS, access control scheduling that lets you determine which computers will be able to use designated internet sites and services at the hours you choose and both user-defined and automatic QoS and WMM traffic shaping.

We tested the router with D-Link’s DWA-160 dual-band USB wireless adaptor (£46 including VAT). Unfortunately, long range 2.4GHz throughput was particularly poor at 9.4Mbit/s from a Centrino 2 laptop, although our 5GHz test managed 31.5Mbit/s at 20m using an own-brand adaptor.

The DIR-825 has a lot of features, but it doesn’t get them all quite right. At this price we’d expect a fully fledged NAS server and we’d have liked 3G failover to be automatic.