At one time or another PC gaming was the only way to go when it came to playing games over the internet. During my younger years I remember watching a friend of mine playing his first game of Doom online in his basement, he was immediately hooked and I was kind of amazed. Back then I never played PC games online as I never had a rig strong enough to really take advantage of the early online titles plus I was more of a console gamer with the NES, Sega Genesis, SNES and whatnot. Since that time however, videogame consoles have made great strides in the realm of online gaming. Sega’s Dreamcast was the first machine to really bring me into the world of online gaming. I remember playing NFL 2K1 and Phantasy Star Online into the wee hours of the morning with a few good friends of mine over the 56.6k modem built into that machine. Of course Sega’s console was not a success, but consoles as a whole have exploded in their effort to take their wares online and the current crop of ‘next-generation’ machines regularly release titles to play over the World Wide Web. Oh yeah, and PC’s are still actively involved in online gaming too.

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have consoles that go online, and it is up to you to provide a roadway to the web for each one. This road comes in the form of the various routers that are available in today’s stores. A company that is very well associated with routers is D-Link. My very first router that I used for my original Xbox and PC to share the internet was a basic 4-port D-Link router. Since that time however consoles (and PC’s) have made advancements in online connectivity as well have started to require large amounts of bandwidth, so companies like D-Link have also had to make advancements to keep up. D-Link was kind enough to send a review unit of their latest gaming specific router, the D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme N Gaming Router. This is a 4 port/wireless router that is geared for the gamer in the house. As you read my review you will see an emphasis on videogaming console connectivity more then PC. This is highly due to our readership who seem to be heavily involved in the console world. But don’t fret you PC only users/gamers; I will address this area as well.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Let’s get some of the technical information out of way right now. The specs of the DGL-4500 are as follows:

Standards

- IEEE 802.11n (draft 2.0)
- IEEE 802.11g
- IEEE 802.11a
- IEEE 802.11b
- IEEE 802.3
- IEEE 802.3u

Interface Types

- 4 Gigabit LAN Ports
- 1 Gigabit WAN Port
- USB Port (for Windows® Connect Now)

Wireless Bandwidth

- 2.4GHz and 5GHz (note: not simultaneous)

Security

- 64/128-bit WEP
- WPA™ & WPA2™ (Wi-Fi Protected Access)

Antenna Type

- 3 External Reverse SMA Dualband Antennas

Advanced Firewall Features

- Network Address Translation (NAT)
- Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI)
- VPN Pass-through / Multi-sessions PPTP / L2TP / IPSec

Device Management

- Internet Explorer® v6 or later;
- Mozilla® Firefox® v1.5 or later;
- or other Java-enabled Browsers

Minimum System Requirements

- Windows Vista™3, Windows® XP SP2, or Mac OS® X (v10.4)4
- Internet Explorer® v6 or Mozilla Firefox® v1.5 + CD-ROM Drive
- Network Interface Card For Internet Access:
- Cable or DSL Modem
- Subscription with an Internet Service Provider (ISP)

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS

Once you unpack the DGL-4500 from the box the first thing you will notice is how sexy this router is. Yes, I said sexy. The unit’s finish is somewhat akin to the Playstation 3’s which is very stylish and quite attractive to the eye. That being said it is also prone to scuffs, scratches and fingerprints which means one will have to take care of the unit to keep such eyesores away.

The DGL-4500 also features a built in OLED screen on the top of the unit. This allows for anyone to see the status of a variety of things such as WAN, LAN and Wireless information as well as details of your internet connection. I was somewhat taken by surprise with how much information was available on the OLED screen. You can navigate through the various features using two display navigation buttons. A lot of the information contained on the screen is quite technical too, and for the basic user like me it may not mean a lot, but to someone who is well versed in the technical side of PC’s and whatnot, a lot of the information will be quite valuable.

Hooking up the DGL-4500 was a breeze. D-Link provides a very useful, and very giant, one page step by step process on what to do to hook up your new router to create a network. These steps are also laid out via pictures, so anyone, including those with the very little knowledge of PC’s or networking, will be able to get the hardware set-up quite easily.

The DGL-4500 also offers an internet based set-up wizard that, in my opinion, is second to none. I have a DIR-625 at home, so I was somewhat familiar with it. However, those who are not very adapt at setting a router up via software should have no problem following the steps laid out by this internet set-up wizard. I am not going to get into an in-depth write up about how detailed the options within the wizard are, but what I will comment on is the fact that there is a heck of a lot of them. For any user to set up the parameters of the router, it can range from the most basic to the most detailed of things. Users who want to do such things as assign specific IP addresses will have no problem doing so and there are also a lot of other options such as firewall settings, DMZ assignments, hosting your own FTP, adjusting what wireless signal the router sends out, the status of your network and a very useful help option. Overall there is a lot one can tweak with this router and it should make any tech-head out there quite happy.

As noted earlier, the DGL-4500 is geared towards gamers so it has been blessed with D-Link’s proprietary Gamefuel technology. The simplest way to explain this technology is that Gamefuel identifies network traffic that is specific to gaming and it prioritizes the bandwidth to accommodate it. Being that we here at game-boyz.com specialize in news, reviews and previews in the videogaming industry, it would make sense that we take a look at this router for its gaming applications.

PERFORMANCE

In my effort to review the DGL-4500 in a typical environment I took the unit back to my home office where I have a variety of electronics that I wanted to use to test it out. The following is what I used to in my analysis of the performance of the router:

- Xbox 360 using a network cable to the router
- Playstation 3 (PS3) wirelessly connected to router
- Nintendo Wii wirelessly connected to router
- Toshiba Satellite M40 wirelessly connected to router using D-Link DWA-642 Notebook N Adapter (Windows XP(SP2))

Do you see a theme in my testing? The majority of my testing was through consoles. My notebook is used as my home office computer for writing my reviews, surfing the net and posting articles. Interestingly enough at my home office my notebook and my Nintendo Wii are on the second floor of my home and quite a distance away from my router and cable modem location, so to test the performance of the DGL-4500 this was quite useful in helping me with my impressions.

After setting up the DGL-4500 using the internet set-up wizard it was quite easy for all of my equipment to find and use the signal that the router sent out. My Toshiba notebook had no problems hooking up to the network and I was up and running in minutes. Overall my computer was able to maintain a good connection to the router from the second floor and I was able to surf the web, retrieve e-mail, use MSN Messenger and even post articles without any incident. I do have to say though that there were two strange hiccups in the week that I used the router at my home office. Both times it was like the router and notebook adapter would not sync up during regular use and it caused the connection to be lost. The only way I was able to solve this issue each time was to take out the notebook adapter and then reinsert it. Once this was done the connection immediately synced and the internet and all associated options were back up and running. I can’t figure out why this was the case. I did a bit of a search on the internet about any issues with the DGL-4500 and the only thing I found is that users have sometimes experienced a reset of the router under extremely heavy loads, but this would only take a second or two to resolve itself. There was no mention of the issue I experienced. Whatever it was it was solved quite easily, but it was quite confusing. Overall my connection speeds to the internet were quite solid and consistent. I was able to maintain some pretty high upload and download speeds that were indicative of my internet package at home even though they were slightly little hampered given that it was done over quite a distance wirelessly. Regardless I was able to stream media on the PC off the internet and download some large files quite quickly.

In terms of gaming with videogame consoles, simplicity is the key when being able to hook them up to the World Wide Web. In the past there have been routers that have had incompatibility issues with the various consoles on the market and currently there are documented issues even with the present ‘next-generation’ machines out there. Even when new routers are released some of them still have difficulties connecting with the various consoles which each use their own network to play online (Xbox LIVE, PLAYSTATION Network, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection). Except for one tiny hiccup getting the right security key for the PS3, none of my consoles had any difficulty initiating connectivity with the DGL-4500.

The Xbox 360, which was hardwired to the DGL-4500, immediately found the new router and was able to automatically assign what it needed to in order for a quick and easy connection to the Xbox LIVE service. The Nintendo Wii, which is quite a distance away from the DGL-4500, found the wireless access point right away and once the proper settings were entered in the Wii set-up menu connecting to the network was not an issue at all. Finally the PS3 found the DGL-4500 right away as well, and except for a minor hiccup in entering the security key it was able to connect to the PLAYSTATION Network quite quickly and efficiently. All in all the ability for every one of the videogame consoles to find and connect to the network in a matter of minutes was quite pleasing to this writer.

I had the chance to play a few different games over each of the consoles respective networks. For the PS3 I tested the connectivity to the PLAYSTATION Network using the recently released Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and I also downloaded free content from the redesigned PLAYSTATION Store. For the Xbox 360 I tested the connectivity to Xbox LIVE using Rainbow Six Vegas 2, the very recently released Grand Theft Auto IV and I also downloaded free content from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Finally, to test the Nintendo Wii and its connection to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Network I used the recently released Mario Kart.

I have to say that I had zero issues playing each game mentioned for each console. If anything, I noticed that my wireless experience on the PS3 using Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was a little smoother then before. There are online issues as a whole with this game but they did seem a little better for me when playing through the DGL-4500. As well, downloading free content from both the Xbox LIVE Marketplace and the PLAYSTATOIN Store seemed just a tad faster. It was not a marked improvement per se, but being that I have downloaded a lot of content in the past I did notice that there was a slight difference and this difference seemed a bit faster. Finally, the Nintendo Wii played flawlessly wirelessly. I was very pleased with this given that the Nintendo Wii is so far away from the DGL-4500 and on a floor above it. I played a lot of Mario Kart games online with the Nintendo Wii with people from all around the globe and there were zero issues, zero lag and no dropped signals.