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The DIR-826L Cloud Gigabit Router N600 is an 802.11n dual-band wireless router with four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a USB port to which you can attach USB drives. As it’s a D-Link ‘cloud’ router, you can access, configure and view media stored on your router over the internet when away from home. You can even download iOS and Android apps that let you make the most of the router.
One such app is QRS Mobile, which lets you run the DIR-826L’s set up wizard from the comfort of your own tablet. The app has a clear, uncluttered interface and is a neat way of configuring your internet connection, wireless security and web interface password should you not want to do so with your computer. Sadly, that’s all QRS Mobile does. We’d prefer it to provide access to all controls as well, not just a setup wizard.
The DIR-826L’s web interface is okay, but could be better organised
Should you want to configure the DIR-826L further, you must log in to its web interface. The organisation of its web interface can be a little confusing and it takes a while to know where you should look for the settings you want to alter. It may be inexpensive, but the DIR-826L has many useful features such as port forwarding and QoS settings. It even has website filtering to prevent network users visiting certain websites.
SPEED TEST
To test the DIR-826L’s data transfer speeds, we first connected to it using our Centrino’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor on the 2.4GHz band. We achieved speeds of 43.4Mbit/s at one metre, 41.4Mbit/s at 10 metres and 20Mbit/s at 25 metres. These aren’t the fastest speeds we’ve seen, but they’re good, and similar to the more expensive TP-Link WDR4300’s (see Reviews, Shopper 301) speeds of 38.6Mbit/s at one metre, 41.5Mbit/s at 10 metres and 19.2Mbit/s at 25 metres.
When we used D-Link’s own DWA-182 USB Wi-Fi adaptor and connected on the 2.4GHz band we achieved speeds of 78.8Mbit/s at one metre, 76.6Mbit/s at 10 metres and 11.8Mbit/s at 25 metres. The first two speeds are respectable, but the last shows a big drop in transfer speed at 25 metres.
As the DIR-826L’s a dual-band router, we connected to it on the 5GHz band using our Centrino’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor and achieved data transfer speeds of 93.2Mbit/s at one metre, 83.6Mbit/s at 10metres and 8.5Mbit/s at 25 metres. Again, there’s a big drop in transfer speed at 25 metres, but the former speeds are good and are very similar to those of the much more expensive Asus RT-N66U.
When we connected to it on the 5GHz band using the DWA-182 Wi-Fi dongle, we achieved data transfer speeds of 126.5Mbit/s at one metre, 109.8Mbit/s at 10 metres and 25.7Mbit/s at 25 metres. These are quick speeds that can easily stream your media.
MEDIA FRIENDLY?
The DIR-826L has a single USB connection to which you can attach USB drives to share on your network. The media on the drive can be accessed via a web browser, your operating system’s filesystem browser or a mobile app. The DIR-826L’s web interface lets you can create users, set permissions for them and give them home folders.
We had no trouble accessing the media on our attached USB drive. We could stream HD video to our iPad at 25 metres comfortably on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. There was no stuttering while it buffered, which meant we could enjoy our videos without interruption.
Curiously, the DIR-826L doesn’t have a built-in media server, which surprised us. Yes, you can stream media using the SharePort Mobile app, but what if you want to stream media to a PC?
CLOUD SURFING
The DIR-826L lets you provide cloud services for your users without having to configure many settings. Once you’ve registered your router with the Mydlink website using the wizard in the DIR-826L’s web interface, you can access the router’s web interface and attached storage over the internet.
The DIR-826L provides good Wi-Fi speeds, not the fastest, but it has some advanced options and a decent – if basic – selection of mobile apps. D-Link’s web interface could be better organised, and its mobile apps need to offer more options if it’s to be as user-friendly and useful as D-Link would like it to be, but it’s a very likeable router. It costs little and is a bargain buy if you want a cheap router with decent short-range Wi-Fi performance.
