D-Link Wireless 108G Gaming Router

Examination:

Seeing the D-Link DGL-4300 GamerLounge Gaming Router first hand, we were very impressed with its overall appearance. We had seen pictures of the device previous to receiving it, but when looking it over for ourselves we were very pleased with the appearance. Most of D-Link's previous consumer grade products use a combination of silver and grey, but the Gaming Router is pure black. The front of the device is very similar to previous D-Link routers, with the location of the D-Link logo, model number, and LED location. However, another one of the appearance improvements come through the LEDs. Rather than using green LEDs, the DGL-4300 uses bright blue LEDs. The LEDs on the front of the router include power, WAN, WLAN, and four LAN LEDs, one for each of the four LAN ports.

Turning around the device is the antenna connector, four auto MDI/MDIX LAN ports, auto MDI/MDIX WAN port, reset button, and power connector. Adding to the appearance are some white/orange highlights around the ports. Except for the colors and LEDs, the DGL-4300 looks very similar to other D-Link routers; it’s mainly what’s inside the device that sets it apart.

Installation:

The hardware installation is quite simple; just having to connect the WAN and LAN Ethernet cables along with attaching the power cable and antenna. We then launched our web browser and entered the router's default IP address (192.168.0.1). We were immediately presented with the new administration interface of the DGL-4300. A Macromedia Flash banner spans the top of the page. Basic, advanced, tools, status, and help are the Flash buttons displayed below the banner. To the left of the main content section of the page are sub-menus for each of the five different menus. After entering the administrator password for the first time, the basic wizard page is displayed. Two setup wizards are accessible from this page; wireless security and Internet connection. Also from the basic menu; WAN, LAN, DHCP, wireless, and wireless security are accessible. Through each of the different pages, it's incredibly easy to configure your Internet and wireless settings.

From the advanced section, many additional pages can be accessed; the list includes virtual server, special applications, gaming, GameFuel, routing, access control, web filter, MAC address filter, firewall, inbound filters, and advanced wireless. One of the new features to appear with this router is the GameFuel Technology. D-Link's GameFuel Technology is designed to improve online gaming performance by prioritizing time-sensitive traffic. By prioritizing this traffic, packets of information for online games will be sorted prior to taking care of information that isn't as time-sensitive, such as HTTP or FTP. From the firewall section, SPI (Secure Packet Inspection) and DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) can be controlled.

From the tools, the administrator password and remote management can be controlled. Also from this area, the firmware can be updated. In our case, we were shipped with the latest firmware version (1.2). Rebooting the device and resetting the device can also be taken care of from here.

At the final tab before help, all information regarding the 108G Gaming Router can be viewed from the status page. The specific pages include device information, wireless, routing, logs, statistics, and active sessions. From the help section, all of the different help topics are sorted by menu (basic, advanced, tools, status). Also available from the help section is a glossary of different networking terms.

The overall process of configuring the network router was extremely simple and took only a matter of minutes. The GUI has definitely been improved to be easier to use along with new graphics and flash animations, to improve the experience.