Can They Ship This One?

Updated 9/4/2008: Added info on USB "SharePort" functions

Figure 1: D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Router

D-Link appears to be taking another run at getting a toehold in the simultaneous dual-band draft 802.11n router market, which is currently dominated by Linksys' WRT600N [reviewed] and WRT610N [reviewed]. The DIR-825 quietly appeared on D-Link's website last week and could be the replacement for the company's troubled and much-delayed DIR-855 [reviewed], which is still in short supply.

The FCC photos show pre-production samples. Shipping product may differ.

Thanks go to SNB Forum members jdabbs, who provided the initial research into the FCC ID docs and Tipstir, for...the tip!

Figure 2 shows the inside of the 825. Although the fuzzy FCC pictures are a bit hard to make out, you can see a layout that looks very similar to the DIR-855's, with two mini-PCI radio boards stacked together. The boards appear to have three antenna terminals, but only two are cabled out to external antennas attached via RP-SMA connectors.

Figure 2: DIR-825 inside view

In fact, a closer look at the FCC photos turns up a "DGL-4500" marking on the board (Figure 3).

Figure 3: "DGL-4500" marking on main board

You can definitely see the family resemblance between the 825 and 855's boards in Figures 4 and 5.

Figure 4: FCC photo of DIR-825 main board

Component close-up photos in the FCC ID docs were nice enough to clearly show that the 825 uses a Ubicom IP5170U clocked at 350 MHz—same as used in the 855. But the switch is different, with the 825 using a Realtek RTL8366SR gigabit switch, instead of the Realtek RTL8356 in the 855. The single PSC A2S28D40CTP memory chip provides 16 MB of DDR RAM.

Figure 5: DIR-855 main board

Tags: 802.11n, D-Link, WiFi,

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