TP-Link TL-WR642G 108M Wireless Router review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 20 Jul 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: David Ludlow

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

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Review
Specs

TP-Link is a well-known manufacturer of wireless kit in China, but the TL-WR642G 108M Wireless Router is the first product that we've seen in the UK.

It's a standard wireless router with no ADSL modem, and it has one of the most attractive prices for a wireless router that we've reviewed.

Configuration is performed through the router's web-based management page. There's a quick-start wizard to guide you through the basic configuration, but it doesn't prompt you to turn on security. We also ran into some problems with the wireless configuration, as turning on the 108Mbit/s mode forced the router to operate on channel 6. While the supplied TP-Link wireless adaptor worked with this setting, our Centrino notebook kept losing the signal. To get it to work we had to turn off the 108Mbit/s mode.

This didn't turn out to be a bad thing, as throughput was good when we tested with our Centrino notebook. There was quite a drop-off in performance at far range, but we were pleased to see that we still got a throughput of 6.45Mbit/s at 25m.

Switching to a matching TP-Link 108Mbit/s wireless adaptor (USB, PCI and PC Card adaptors are all available for around £12) got similar results, but a slightly faster throughput of 7.25Mbit/s at 25m.

The TL-WR642G has all the usual features you'd expect to find on a modern router, including port forwarding, UPnP and a firewall. It's a shame that we suffered problems with the 108Mbit/s mode, but the TL-WR642G proved itself to be a good router with excellent range. For this price it's a bargain if all you want to do is share an internet connection.

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