THE D-LINK DIR-635 is a draft-N router that promises faster speed and greater range. The DIR 635 is a good looking little chap. It has three antennae, and a quartet of 10/100 Ethernet ports, besides the obligatory WAN port. 10/100 ports are of questionable value here, since you won't be able to utilize the full capacity of draft-N without gigabit Ethernet ports. The web interface though, is a thing of beauty. D-Link has changed the entire look and feel from their older lineup, and it's a pleasure to use. All the options are well laid out and lucidly explained. A lot of thought has gone into the interface, and it shows. The feature list is nothing special, with the usual filtering, port-forwarding, and security options that are found on all other routers available here.

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The DIR 635 fared poorly in our performance tests, and this is where it lost major
points. Though the range was pretty good, certainly much better than our older 802.11g Wi-Fi router, the promised speeds just weren't there. We tested with aD-link DWA547 PCI card in our desktop and a DWA-140 USB adapter in a laptop, so all the equip- ment was from the same family. Even so, we saw speeds of 30 - 40 Mbps, nowhere near the typical real world speed of 50 -70 Mbps of other draft-n models. Copying files from the wired connection was faster; we reached the full speed of a 100 Mbps link, and it appeared that it could have been faster with a Gigabit connection. Great interface and good range notwithstanding, at this price point it's hard to justify the poor performance.