When you buy a router, what do you want? An easy to understand web setup? Fast connections anywhere in your wireless area, with strong signal and no dead spots? Do you want the latest encryption options that can be modified at your discretion? Everyone wants all of those, but can the TRENDnet 300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit Router do it all? Read this review to find out. See the original at TBCS.

Introduction

Wireless routers are commonplace in most homes and business in urbanized societies. In most apartment complexes, it is likely that almost every residence has their own wireless router. In the office building where I work there are on average three separate businesses per floor, each having their own wireless network. When most wireless routers will penetrate through at least two floors, a single office can detect an average of 12 or more wireless networks around them.

So how does one go about choosing the right router? With potentially that many networks constantly around a home and office, it becomes necessary that a router have a strong signal, be as protected as possible, but still be easy to use for all of the household members or employees. TRENDnet recently sent me their 300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit router, product TEW-639GR, to review and test. Is it everything you need for a home router, or is it just another throw away box that will litter our junk closet?

Introduction | Features and Specifications | Overview | Setup | Testing | Conclusion

Features and Specifications

TRENDnet touts the TEW-639GR as a 300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit Router that offers unsurpassed wireless speed, coverage and reliability, and their product website claims the following design aspects as features:

And the formal specifications:

Hardware Specifications

Wireless Specifications

The router is a classic solution for home networking or a small business office environment. With 4x Gigabit ports, up to 300Mbps on the wireless N Draft 2.0 standard, a wide range of default security measures, and in-depth control over DMZ, DNS, and WDS functions, this TRENDnet wireless router should be able to hold its own.

Introduction | Features and Specifications | Overview | Setup | Testing | Conclusion

Overview

The TRENDnet 300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit Router, or TEW-639GR, arrived at my doorstep in a regular shipping box. Out of the shipping container, the router is nestled in a glossy package that is covered in all of the related marketing and advertising material. The front of the box makes bold claims like 14 times the speed and six times the coverage of the wireless G standard, and the back of the box provides a basic overview of the physical router as well as networking options and related products.

Box Front

Box Back

The router itself is relatively small for such a powerful piece of equipment, and sports a very reflective black gloss cover. The three antennas in the rear rotate left and right and will bend back away from the unit. There is a WPS button, or Wi-Fi Protected Setup, located on the left side of the unit. The WPS button can be used to allow wireless clients to connect to the router without having to remember or enter any encryption keys. Basically, when you press the WPS button the router becomes unprotected for two minutes. In that two minutes you need to connect your wireless device to the broadcasting SSID, and the router will walk you through configuring the network settings. After the two minutes are up, the router will return to its normal protected state with your device connected as if you configured it yourself.

Router

Accessories

WPS Button

The rear of the router is where the TEW-639GR shows its true colors. From left to right there is an antenna, the power plug, a reset pin, the wireless on and off switch, the WAN port, the second antenna, four LAN ports, and the last antenna. The on/off switch is a nice feature as it allows you to quickly disable wireless without having to connect to the router. Since this is meant to be a small office or home network wireless router, the four LAN ports are acceptable for normal use. On the front of the unit, the indicator lights from left to right are power, LAN1 through 4 connectivity, WAN/Internet connectivity, wireless status, WPS, and a reserve light.

Router rear

Indicator Lights

Introduction | Features and Specifications | Overview | Setup | Testing | Conclusion

Setup

The TEW-639GR's manual is the best starting point for setting up your new router and network. After you pass the initial French instructions, the English portion of the manual will provide a page each for understanding your equipment and installing the hardware. As with most routers, you connect your Cable/ADSL modem to the WAN port using an Ethernet Cable, plug in the AC adapter, and connect a computer to one of the LAN ports with another Ethernet Cable.

Like the vast majority of other wireless routers, the configuration takes place in a web browser through a local IP address. Once resolved, you will log in with a standard username and password located in the manual. The first two steps TRENDnet tells you to configure are the Internet Connection Type (normally DHCP), and any information and settings provided by your ISP.

WAN Settings

The next step is to navigate to the wireless settings and configure the SSID and Security settings. Following slaveofconvention's Home Network Security article, I changed my SSID to not broadcast as well as choosing an SSID that few will guess. I also selected WPA2-PSK for my security mode, but I will spare you the screen shot of my encryption and password. After these two options are changed TRENDnet instructs you to go to any URL, like www.trendnet.com or www.thebestcasescenario.com, to test your connectivity. If they resolve, you're initial configuration is done!

Basic Wireless Settings

This router is able to set up every type of encryption and security measure that I have come across in wireless networking, and they can all be accessed through the succinct side menus:

The setup for the TEW-639GR is intuitive, responsive, and full of features, and it is easily the best wireless router GUI I have ever used.

Introduction | Features and Specifications | Overview | Setup | Testing | Conclusion

Testing

In order to test the effectiveness of this router for common users, those using this router in homes and small businesses, I ran four tests in the same environment three times each to ensure accuracy.

The test environment is a suburban apartment complex that is three stories high with eight apartments on each floor in each building for a total of 24 apartments within a 200 ft radius sphere. The arrangement of the building is fairly standard, and the density of appliances and wireless networks in range is similar to most office buildings or high density residential areas.

The four tests I ran were a maximum throughput test, a range throughput test, a mixed mode throughput test, and a maximum range test. For each trial I would turn off the wireless connection on the client device, wait five minutes, turn it back on, ensure connection, and repeat the test. The throughput tests are determined by timing the transfer of a 500MB file across the wireless network to determine throughput rates. Performance results are reported in Mbps (Mega-bits per second), and are presented for all three trials of each test. Specifics of each test include:

• Maximum throughput test: I placed the wireless device 10 feet away from the router with settings for both devices set in favor of the best possible transmission speed. Since this was a wireless N router, I set the router to N-only mode on the least congested channel in my area. I used a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop with a Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-card for wireless reception.
• Range Throughput Test: I placed the wireless client 100 feet away from the router with the same settings.
• Mixed Mode Throughput Test: The wireless router is set to work in mixed mode, where it supports all wireless specification including Wireless-N (802.11n), Wireless-G (802.11g), and Wireless-b (802.11b). I connected the Wireless-N test client and another legacy Wireless-G client to the router and timed each separately.
• Maximum Range Test: I start out with the Wireless-N device 25 ft away from the device, and increase my range by 25 ft until I can no longer detect a signal.

To create a file of exactly 500MB, I used the following Windows command:

This creates an empty file of FileName with Size in bytes. To get 500MB it bytes, you mutliply (500 x 1024 x 1024)=524288000 bytes.

The software for the wireless card was able to provide a decent congestion analysis graph:

Congestion Analysis

I also used NetStumbler to view other networks around me, as well as to later record the signal strength:

Network Layout

So with the basic analysis complete, I ran the four tests and entered the results into a table. I recorded both the Windows and the Dell reported speeds in Mbps, and this is usually the maximum throughput available at the current connection. Since a 'Byte' is 8 'bits', I calculated the Actual Transfer rate by dividing 4000 bits (500MB * 8 ), by the time in seconds it took the download to complete, to yield Megabits per second. To quantify the signal strength I used NetStumbler's readout of the Strength to Noise Ratio, or SNR. SNR is the power ration between signal and noise, and any ratio higher than 1:1 indicates more signal than noise. The higher the SNR, the more powerful signal and the less powerful the noise. Since I am in an apartment complex that is surrounded by woods, the strength of the signal will vary more than the power of any noise. The results seem fairly standard:

Results

Since the majority of our information today is stored in a magnitude of bytes, rather than bits, you can divide the Average column by 8 to help calculate how fast a certain file in MB or GB will transfer over the network.

Introduction | Features and Specifications | Overview | Setup | Testing | Conclusion

Conclusion

Pro's:

• Wireless N
• Hardware wireless on/off switch
• Easy to use and feature-full web configuration

Con's:

• Doesn't meet the advertised speeds
• MSRP

Do note, though, that NO wireless router ever meets the advertised speed. This is not really a con, but more of a reminder that it will take absolutely perfect conditions to get near 300Mbps on a wireless connection. The Gigabit ports offer standard Gigabit connections as well, so in all this a very fast, high quality router. Besides "It works" and "It works well", there isn't too much more to say about this awesome little wireless router. I played with the install, I ran the tests, and I put it through its paces. For $60 on both Amazon and Newegg, despite the $113 MSRP, I can see no reason to not give the TRENDnet 300Mbps Wireless N Gigabit Router anything but a TBCS 5/5 rating.

Introduction | Features and Specifications | Overview | Setup | Testing | Conclusion