Web DevelopmentThe whole of the world is going wireless. Get there first by de-cabling courtesy of D-Link’s networking bridge.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Or, with wireless networks, the faster they are, the more havoc microwaving soup in the next room causes.
With so-called Super G wireless devices, such as this bridge, the mooted promise is 108Mbps speeds – a shameful exaggeration, of course, but it is almost twice as fast as its precursor, 54Mbps vanilla G. Unless the microwave’s on, then that speed goes through the floor. But, for when you’re not preparing ready meals, our real world tests had this D-Link and a Netgear DG834GT router copying 300MB of data between two PCs in just over two minutes, as opposed to G’s five minutes.
Not quite justification enough to use the word “blistering” with impunity, but a vast improvement nonetheless.
Yet this is neither wireless access point nor receiver, but a bridge aimed primarily at fooling games consoles or printers into thinking they’re hooked up to the web by an ethernet connection, so they don’t need to be in the same room as your phone point or router. And because a console only needs a standard 512kbps broadband connection, most of this bridge’s capabilities go unused – a PCI or PC card makes better sense if you just want to bless your PC with Super G.
Setup is, in theory, straightforward, but in practice the D-Link’s ugly but simple interface tends to hang mid-configuration, while hitting the top speeds took a lot of settings tweaking. Compatibility is a greater concern: many Wi-Fi devices claim speeds of 108Mbps, but they don’t all use the same technology. Be sure your other kit uses the same Atheros chipset as this, otherwise you’ll be stuck with plain old 54Mbps speeds.
D-Link DWL-G810 | $179.95 | 
For: Impressive speeds, doubling those of its predecessor; pleasingly small.
Against: Ropey interface – lots of tweaking required; limited compatibility.
Verdict: A definite speed boost, but with Wireless-N on the way, you may want to wait.