D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless

Reviews: Networking

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Richard Poelling
Kurtis
D-Link
Oct. 17, 2004

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Adapter Setup

DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Card

To setup the PCI card, you first need to install the drivers from the CD, then install the device into your system. The card should be recognized and begin to communicate with the access point. If you are installing this card into a Windows XP system, windows will provide the interface for your card. If installing into a windows 2000 box, you will have the D-link interface. I would definitely recommend Windows XP if you are using wireless. Service Pack 1 worked well with wireless cards, but with Service Pack 2, Microsoft has boosted the ease of setup for wireless networks. Also with Service Pack 2 the latest security enhancements, especially WPA, have been added. Using the WPA security encryption, the Windows XP interface showed only asterisks when entering in my pre-shared key. In the D-link software under windows 2000, my shared key was visible as plain text, thus allowing anyone who clicked on the icon to see my key.

Since not everyone is running Windows XP, I installed the PCI card into a windows 2000 machine. It is using older hardware, but this should not be a problem. Besides, not everyone has brand new computers these days. Unfortunately, I did have some issues with windows 2000. I endured several system lockups and sometimes, poor performance. Even streaming MP3's became garbled. Most of these problems were remedied with a reboot, but they were still annoying. I would definitely recommend Windows XP SP2 for wireless installations.

DWL-G650 wireless PCMCIA card

The wireless PCMCIA card is just like many others you will find. Installation of the hardware was accomplished by first installing the drivers, and then inserting the card into the laptop. An initial installation of Windows 2000 on the laptop failed to connect to the wireless network using any form of encryption. Turning off the encryption allowed the system to connect without a hitch. A new installation of Windows XP SP2 solved my problems, and I had no further issues connecting to the wireless network. The only real issues I had with the PCMCIA card was what appeared to be a corruption of the wireless settings. I had to use the built-in wireless repair button within windows XP many times to get my connection back. I am uncertain if this was an issue with the D-Link card, the drivers, or the wireless protocol. It was annoying, but not devastating. Every time it happened, the repair button was able to fix it. Most of the time this occurred when the machine was coming out of hibernation.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks
Page 3: Network Setup
Page 4: Network Setup Cont'd...
Page 5: Adapter Setup
Page 6: Testing
Page 7: Conclusion

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4 User Comments

1 - Posted by Rich on October 27, 2004 - 8:19 am

I probably didn't go into too much detail about the fact that this router has a cable test feature. Although nice, it kind of got overshadowed by some of the the other items such as the wireless. I just got a chance to fully utilize this nice little addition. We had internet failure with our existing router and I figured the thing had just died, so I hooked up the dlink to test it out. Sure enough it told me the WAN cable was disconnected. Further information then told me that the Tx pair was OK but the Rx pair had a break at 28 meters. Tracking down the line found a major rip in the cable that was caused by a careless ladder, and sure enough half the wires were intact, the other half weren't so lucky. I would definitely rank that feature up their with the "don't know how good it is until you need it" catagory. Now if they could just get that setup wizard fixed,..... :wink:

2 - Posted by scott on November 11, 2004 - 12:28 pm

I have used the g520 card on XP and 98 machines with no problems connecting to a 624. However, trying to use the cards on win2k at a users has proved out to be misserable. There tech support has only suggested reloading the operating system, 3 times and no help. All in All I would say that it is not usable with win2k and that there tech support is not helpful having clocked up more than 12hrs talking to them.

3 - Posted by Guest on February 12, 2005 - 11:19 pm

I have now spent 5 days trying to get a DI-624 and DWL-G650 functioning on an XP laptop. I also bought a D-Link print server. Level 3 D-Link tech support can't solve the problems. What a mess.

4 - Posted by Rich on August 9, 2005 - 11:36 pm

I would like to post a quick update to this initial review. D-Link has new Firmware for this router which now enhances the virtual cable test feature and adds the WPA2 standard to the security setup. The setup wizard still blows (hint hint). They also removed the speedboost with static turbo to better conform to the WiFi Alliance specifications. All-in-all, I would still recommend this router. It is currently holding its own as my primary gateway. That is saying something since I have fried some gateways too.

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