D-Link's Amplifi DAP-1525 is probably the most unique-looking wireless extender you'lll ever see. The design resembles that of a thermos or an electric coffee grinder. There?s a lot of functionality and features within this device, but with absolutely confusing setup instructions, some quirks in the interface, and inability to sustain throughput beyond 75 feet, the D-Link DAP-1525 falls short.
Specs and Design
The DAP-1525 is a cylindrical device that stands upright and will take up some room as an extender, so careful consideration has to be taken when placing. The front panel has four LEDs: Bridge, AP, WPS (yes, Wireless Protected Setup is supported), and Wired.
The device not only serves as a wireless extender but can actually function as a 2.4 or 5 GHz access point. The back panel features a toggle switch that is used to set the extender in AP or Bridge mode. The back also has four Gigabit Ethernet ports for connected wired devices.
Setup
The biggest problem I had with the DAP-1525 was with the setup instructions and process. The device ships with a "Quick Install Guide" as well as a CD that surprisingly does not have any sort of setup wizard but instead also has an installation guide. The two guides seem to be for two different products. The Quick Install Guide focuses on setting up a new WLAN with the extender set in AP mode and tells nothing about setting it up as a bridge.
I can imagine consumers opening this device, going right to the Quick Install Guide and wreaking havoc on their home networks by following directions that won?t set the DAP-1525 up as an extender but will have them create a new WLAN. Even worse, the directions in the guide and on the CD make no mention of how users can set the device which has a static IP address by default to connect to their home networks. Unless one is comfortable with networking, the instructions D-Link provides are convoluted and, quite frankly, irresponsible.
The Quick Install instructions do tell users how to connect the device through push-button WPS but those instructions are useless if a router does not support WPS or WPS does not work for some reason, which is why it?s crucial that the manual setup instructions be made clearer.
Actually, the device's set up would not be all that hard, if setup were documented properly. I set up the DAP-1525 by connecting the DAP-1525 via Ethernet to my laptop (a step the printed instructions do give). Next, I set the networking setting of my laptop?s LAN adapter to match the setting on the extender (which the directions on the CD detail how to do). I set the device to Bridge mode with the toggle switch and then was able to get into the device's interface through a browser.
From within the interface I selected ?Manual? for configuration option. With the router in Bridge mode, this brings up a Site Survey button. Clicking it pulls up a list of all nearby wireless network. You can select the network you want to add the extender to by clicking a radio button. An issue I ran into in this screen was that the page refreshed so quickly that the radio button would get deselected if I didn?t click it and then hit the ?Next? button fast enough?rather irritating.
Once I selected the wireless network for the extender to join, I then had to change the extender?s network information to match my network settings. I don?t see this important step addressed anywhere in the setup instructions.
I also found it odd that the time by default was set to January 2000. When I tried to sync the device?s time to my laptop's clock by clicking the corresponding button in the interface I received the error, ?Unable to parse HTTP request??but it did finally sync the time after another click.
Performance
If the setup process wasn't bad enough, the performance of the DAP-1525 left much to be desired as well. Here are the results and comparisons with other extenders:
You can see from the chart, D-Link's device starts out strong but by the time I get to 75 feet, throughput starts to peter out. By 100 feet, I couldn't connect to the wireless network. I couldn't even see the SSID listed.
Maybe, in Some Circumstances
If you are looking to extend a wireless signal in a relatively small area?no more than 60 feet away from the router and you want a bridge/repeater that can also act as an AP then this may be the device for you. It's hard for me to imagine that you wouldn't be better off just buying a dual-band router in this case, however. That issue aside, the performance is a deal-breaker, and setup is likely to frustrate average home users. The D-Link Amplifi DAP-1525 ?does extend the signal up to about 75 feet in our testing, and for that gets two and-a-half stars. The Editor's Choice for Wi-Fi booster, so far, is Cisco Linksys' Wireless-N Range/Extender Bridge (RE1000)
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/sKQ_qrFo6Ys/0,2817,2399598,00.asp
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That's awkward: Just as it was announcing a $1.2 million round of funding, online referral startup Curebit was caught lifting designs and code from 37Signals, the company behind popular collaboration tools Basecamp, Highrise, and others. The copying was called out on Twitter by 37Signals partner David Heinemeier Hansson, who, after an exchange with Curebit co-founder Allan Grant, called the Curebit team "fucking scumbags." It probably didn't help that Grant's initial responses didn't seem particularly contrite ? he defended the copying as a "quick test" and at one point told Heinemeier Hansson, "Chill dude :)" (VentureBeat has a great blow-by-blow account of the initial controversy.)![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
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