As its name suggests, D-Link’s DHP-1565 wireless N powerline
gigabit router has both wireless and powerline network connections. The
supposed benefit is that you can use powerline adaptors to reach areas of your
home that Wi-Fi cannot reach, such as garages, without having to buy a separate
powerline adaptor to plug the router into a mains socket. It’s a cable rather
than an ADSL router, so if you're not on a cable connection you’ll need an ADSL
modem or router with an Ethernet port to plug into the DHP-1565’s WAN port.
You can set the DHP-1565 up using its web interface or a
supplied setup utility, but the setup utility disabled our laptop's wireless
connection and didn’t
re-enable it when we’d
finished. The web interface is fairly well organised, with tabs at the top of
the screen, option categories to the left and context-sensitive help to the
right, but it isn’t as
easy to navigate as the interfaces of other routers such as the FritzlBox WLAN
7390 or the DrayTek Vigor 2850n. We still had our network set up in minutes.
When testing over the wireless connection, we achieved data
rates of 45.1 Mbit/s at 1m, 43.2Mbit/s at 10m and 13.7Mbit/s at 25m when using
our Centrino laptop, which are reasonable results. D-Link’s own DIR-645 router
scored 50.4Mbit/s at 1m, 46.6Mbit/s at 10m and 18.5Mbit/s at 25m, so is a
better choice if you just need a cable router and don’t want powerline
functions.
We conducted the same tests using D-Link's DWA-160 Wi-Fi
adaptor, but achieved much lower data rates of 27.2Mbit/s at 1m, 23.3Mbit/s at
10m and a lowly 2.8Mbit/s over 25m.
We were expecting fast speeds from the router's built-in
powerline networking functions, as we have seen up to 140Mbit/s from powerline
in the past. The DHP-1565 adheres to the 500Mbit/s HomePlug AV standard, and we
had no problems setting it up with a Devolo dLAN 500 AVplus adaptor. At 1m
range with this adaptor, we saw a maximum data transfer rate of 139.8Mbit/s,
which is what we expected. When we moved 10m away, we saw 39.3Mbit/s, which is
7Mbit/s slower than we saw when we used two dLAN 500 AVplus adaptors, but quick
enough to stream HD video.
The DHP-1565’s USB port lets you share a printer or USB
storage device over the network. You need to download D-Link’s SharePort
utility to add USB printers to your network; the utility lets you use connected
USB printers as if they are plugged directly into your PC.
D-Link DHP-1565
Wireless N Powerline Router ports
The DH P-1565 is easy to set up and has useful USB storage
and print sharing capabilities. Having Wi-Fi and powerline networking makes it
easy to reach every part of your home. Its performance over Wi-Fi and powerline
networking isn't spectacular, and it’s expensive, but this is still one of the
most versatile routers we’ve seen.
Technical data
Price:
$125
Verdict:
It’s not the quickest router we've seen, but the built-in powerline
networking is useful if you're struggling to get a connection in your home
Wireless
homeplug router: 802.11n (300Mbit/s), 4x 10/100/1000Mbit/s LAN ports, 1x WAN
port, UPnP, QoS, 31x145x112, two-year warranty
Power
consumption: 5W on
Details: www.dlink.com
|
