Usage: Network Performance

The wired gigabit ports on the DGL-4500 are fantastic, and give exceptional speed for a small router. The speeds blow the WRT54g's capabilities out of the water, as the DGL-4500 outperforms the WRT54g's 10/100 limit. As such, I'm comparing the DGL-4500's wired speeds to a Dell 8-port web-managed gigabit switch, the PowerConnect 2708.

As we've seen in previous BIOS LEVEL reviews, Windows implementation of SMB tends to be slower than that of Samba. Regardless of this, the DGL-4500 manages to keep up with the Dell switch without issue. Upgrading our test PCs to dedicated network cards may improve performance, but we feel that the DGL-4500 would be left behind at that point.

D-Link also sent us the DWA-652 Xtreme N Notebook adapter, which we used to aide us in benchmarking the router.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get the card working in Ubuntu, and the Ubuntu forums offered little help on the matter. For these reasons, I'll be looking solely at Windows performance for this card.

The wireless speeds don't quite match up against the speeds of the gigabit ports, but the DGL-4500 beats the Linksys WRT54g around the clock. These tests were completed by transferring a file to the laptop utilizing the DWA-652, and then back. From these two transfers, we took an average of the two for our final result.

The DGL-4500 definitely has speed on its side as compared to another popular home router.