We have not covered many networking device in reviews recently, and things have come a long way in the last few years. I still primarily rely on wired connections in my home and office, as the performance and reliability of a Gigabit connection has outweighed the convenience of going wireless. Wireless devices are now capable of much higher throughput than the "G" and "N" days thanks to the Wireless AC standard (802.11ac), which is touted as bringing Gigabit Wi-Fi speeds to the masses. In this review we will be looking at a fairly new router from
D-Link, the DIR-880L, which is rated as a 1900Mbps device, offering simultaneous dual band transfers of 600Mbps on 2.4Ghz and 1300Mbps on 5GHz. If the performance can match the specifications, and the reliability is on par with a wired connection, it may be time for me to reconsider my all wired approach to networking.
The promotional image above shows the D-Link DIR-880L AC1900 Wi-Fi router with its shiny black housing and array of three rather substantial antennas. The unit features a dual core processor to handle the AC wireless transmissions and traffic on the four wired Gigabit connections, as well as allowing the device to handle all of the extra features people have come to expect on a higher end router. The following list covers a good chunk of the product's features and specifications, but for a more complete view of what the DIR-880L has to offer, please visit the
official product page on the D-Link website.
Features and Specifications:
Device Interfaces:
» IEEE 802.11ac wireless LAN1
» IEEE 802.11n/g/b/a wireless LAN
» 10/100/1000 Gigabit WAN port
» Four 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN ports
» Two USB ports (one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0)
» Reset button
» WPS
LEDs:
» Power
» Internet
» WLAN
» LAN (for each port)
» WPS
» USB 2.0 & USB 3.0
Antenna Type:
» Three dual band high-gain antennas
Operating Frequency:
» 2.4 GHz band: 2400 - 2483.5 MHz
» 5 GHz band: 5150 - 5725 MHz
Standards:
» IEEE 802.11ac
» IEEE 802.11n
» IEEE 802.11g
» IEEE 802.11b
» IEEE 802.11a
» IEEE 802.3
» IEEE 802.3u
Security:
» WPA & WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access)
» WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) PIN
Advanced Features:
» Web setup wizard
» Advanced QoS (Quality of Service) with band steering
» Advanced AC SmartBeam
» VPN passthrough/multi-session PPTP/L2TP/IPSec
» VPN Server - L2TP over IPSec
» Bridge mode
» Guest zone
» DLNA media server support
