D-Link HD Media Router 1000: First Look

Hello! My name is Dong Ngo and this is the D-Link HD Media Router 1000 (DIR-657). This new router supports a complete and new design for D-Link router with no antenna sticking up from the back. All of them are now included inside the chassis. On the back, the router has four Gigabit LAN ports and one WAN port. There's an on-off switch here and also an USB port, you need to a D-Link. This port can be use to host any USB devices via D-Link SharePort technology. On the front, there's something we've never seen before in a router, a card slot. This is to host an SD card for the router's built-in media feature, meaning you can stream content and store it on the card such as music or videos to other players in the network. Though, this seem cool and we found that it's more of a gimmick than a feature because even an SD card of the maximum capacity is still not launching up to host five sharing for the whole network and even if it is, it'll be too expensive of a network start solution. Next to the SD card slot is the WPS button that helps hooking up wireless client to the network conveniently. The DIR-657 is the first router from D-Link that offers their OpenDNS-based parental control feature. This allows user to control the Web filtering function from anywhere over the Internet. Going forward, future D-Link router and even existing one will also get this feature. Other than that, this is a single-band of router offering wireless and up to 300 mega bits per second on a 2.4GHz frequency. In a testing, it had decent performance with relatively short range possibly due to the change from external antenna to internal antennas. At the street price of around $100, the DIR-657 makes a very good router. For more information, check out the full review at cnet.com. Once again, my name is Dong Ngo and this has been the first look at the HD Media Router 1000 (DIR-657) from D-Link.