Digital Trends

D-Link DI-624 XtremeG

May 28th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Performance (continued)

When the D-Link wireless PCI card did work, it worked well. In 15 attempts of our test files at about a 10-foot range from the router, our transfer speeds averaged 26.4Mpbs. It topped out at 45.5Mbps, and consistently hit in the high 30's or low 40's. This was in XtremeG mode, so you can see how you really won't be able to attain the 108Mbps speed as advertised. 

With the right conditions, and only 802.11g devices available, the DI-624 combined with the DWL-G520 was a solid performer. The “right conditions” is important to note however, as performance dropped with 802.11b devices in range, when the signal had to travel through walls or when a 2.4GHz wireless phone was in use.

Testing with the DWL-G650 PC card also had a host of issues. The software that installs with the G650 is a bit different than what D-Link provides with the PCI card adapter. The “D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless Utility” as it's called not only allows you to create your wireless connections, but it also provides real-time performance stats. With both the laptop and the router in the same room, less than 10-feet apart, we thought we'd be able to get a great connection. We disconnected all of our 2.4GHz phones and other electronic devices just to be sure. With the original router firmware and allowing Windows XP to manage the wireless connection, we were able to easily obtain a connection to our wireless network. However, with the 2.42 firmware and the D-Link utility, it took a long time to even get a connection. We would get a connection and it would drop whenever we tried to do access the network or the Internet. Many restarts and wireless disconnects and reconnects later, we were able to obtain a solid connection. This issue plagued us throughout testing after the firmware upgrade.

Once we finally were able to get a good connection and still under the “ideal” conditions, our transfers were slow and erratic. Even at such a close range, ‘Link Quality' and ‘Signal Strength' as measured by the D-Link utility were erratic. It was not uncommon to see each measurement bounce from 100% to the 50's and 60's and back. Our transfer rate bounced around from as low as 11Mbps to 108Mbps and the actual data throughput was all over the place, with us consistently seeing rates even below 200Kbps.

It's very hard to get a solid transfer speed when the connection is so erratic, but with several tests we were able to top out at 34.2Mbps. An average would be hard to calculate, but we consistently saw rates in the 10-18Mbps range.

We thought that our original D-Link DWL-G650 PC card was faulty, so we bought another one at a retail store. Unfortunately, the same issues occurred even with the new card. After a brief net search, we found forum posts in this thread and others at Broadband Reports that confirmed what we were experiencing. Users were reporting that whenever the DWL-G650 lost a signal, the "rescan" function of the utility usually would not work.The fix was to reboot your computer, in hopes that the signal would be obtained again. This was quite frustrating to us, and to the posters in the forums, as it happened quite often and there was seemingly no consistent performance. It in-effect, made the DWL-G650 useless.