The Trendnet TEW-632BRP 300Mbps Wireless N Home Router has been added to the Wireless and Router Charts. The TEW-632BRP is Trendnet's entry-level draft 802.11n router.

The 632BRP looks like a two-antenna design, but it has a third, internal, circuit-board antenna. It is a re-branded Cameo Communications WLN2206, which is all-Atheros design using an AR9130 SoC as CPU and Baseband/MAC. The 10/100 switch is an AR8216 and there is 32 MB of RAM and 4 MB of flash. The radio chip is either an AR9102 2x2 MIMO or AR9103 3x3.

Routing throughput starts out in the low 90 Mbps. But WAN > LAN throughput starts declining after around 200,000,000 Bytes are transferred and bottoms out around 20 Mbps (see Slideshow). Maximum Simultaneous Sessions measured very good at 180, however. Routing features are decent with many port-forwarding options and port and URL filtering, but no QoS.

The 632BRP violates Wi-Fi Alliance 802.11n Draft 2.0 Certification requirements by not defaulting to out-of-the-box 20 MHz bandwidth operation. It supports a full complement of WEP, WPA and WPA2 security modes as well as WPS. But, being Atheros-based, it gives up around half its throughput when operated in WEP or WPA/TKIP.

Wireless open-air testing of best-case throughput in 20 MHz bandwidth mode measured a relatively low 45 Mbps in each direction. Switching to 40 MHz bandwidth improved this to around 60 Mbps. Despite these low measurements, the 632BRP performed surprisingly well with a quick walk-around test obtaining a solid connection at our most difficult test Locations 4 and 5 with around 3-5 Mbps throughput!

Read the full review.

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Tags: 802.11n, Trendnet, WiFi,

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