Irvine, CA-based D-Link recently broke through a price barrier with the DI-604, a router that sells for only $59 MSRP, potentially making Ethernet routers a commodity product like Ethernet NICs. The company hasn’t quite done that with its new wireless router, but it is the first to integrate two different flavors of 802.11 in to home or small office router.
The D-Link AirPro DI-764 Dual Band Wireless Broadband Router combines 54Mbps 802.11a and 11Mbps 802.11b in the same unit, supporting both types of clients. It supports wireless “turbo modes” by using Texas Instruments’ Packet Binary Convolutional Coding (PBCC) modulation — 72Mbps for 802.11a and 22Mbps for 802.11b.
In addition, it includes a 4-port 10/100 Fast Ethernet switch for wired users. It will retail for $499.
For security the DI-764 uses an integrated NAT firewall and has full virtual private network (VPN) pass-thru support for multiple IPSec, L2TP and PPTP sessions. The router will block IP addresses, URLs, or domain names you preset, and features MAC address authentication with logging to prevent intrusions.
A Web browser-based interface is used for configuration and there is a setup wizard to create quick file and Internet sharing out of the box. Different configuration profiles can be saved to a hard drive as back up should the router be reset. Because it has a built in Web server (for the configuration), it also can support remote management.
The product will have a one year warranty and free tech support.
Eric Griffith is the managing editor of 802.11 Planet.
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