D-Link DAP-1360 review

Although on the face of it the D-Link DAP-1360 is an 802.11n wireless access point that you can connect to a wired Ethernet network for WiFi access, it's also designed to help solve the perennial problem of wireless networking: range.

To this end, it has two additional modes. In Repeater mode, it picks up the signal from an existing wireless network and transparently retransmits it, boosting your network's range. In Wireles Client mode, the DAP-1360 turns into a bridge, converting any Ethernet devices into a wireless one, so that they can join an existing WiFi network.

Before you can configure the DAP-1360, you'll have to connect it to your network. It connects to your router via a 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet port and automatically broadcasts an unsecured wireless connection.

To configure it you'll have to log into its web interface by typing its default IP address (192.168.0.50) into a browser. As many wireless routers dish out IP addresses in the range 192.168.1.x, you may need to manually change your computer's IP address to access the DAP-1360 (192.168.1.51 will do it). Once in the DAP-1360's administration interface you can simply change its IP address to match the rest of your network. This process isn't particularly hard, but we would have preferred it to default to receiving an IP address via DHCP and then broadcast its presence on the network using UPnP.

Once you're connected to the DAP-1360 life becomes a lot easier, thanks to its simple configuration wizard. It'll help you choose between Access Point, Repeater and Wireless Client modes and take you through securing the web interface and wireless network. All these options are also available in the DAP-1360's wireless setup menu, where you can also disable channel-bonding, change its current wireless channel and generate a WPS PIN number to use with devices that don't support push-button WPS. Other menus let you use MAC address filtering to allow only designated devices on to your network, and limit the number of wireless connections it'll accept.

Unfortunately, its wireless performance was inconsistent, despite our attempts to improve it by manually setting the wireless channel and disabling channel-bonding. Our best effort produced a very respectable 43.4Mbit/s at 1m and 35Mbit/s at 10m with our Centrino 2 laptop, but the same settings the following day produced much slower results and required us to manually change wireless challenge again. Results using D-Link's £46 DWA-160 wireless adaptor were disappointing and performance at 20m was poor no matter what settings or devices we used.

If it was less of a struggle to get decent transfer speeds, the DAP-1360 would be easy to recommend, particularly for users who wish to extend their existing wireless network to cover large homes, offices or even gardens. However, with poor range and inconsistent performance in our tests, the DWA-1360 proved too hard for us to get a reliable connection.