New To The Charts: D-Link DIR-685 Xtreme N Storage Router

Photo of author

Tim Higgins

The DIR-685 is an interesting "all-in-one" router incorporating a 2.4 GHz draft 802.11n access point, four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and WAN port, 3.2" color LCD screen and built-in NAS (when you add a 2.5" SATA hard drive, 1 TB max.).

The NAS includes UPnP AV / DLNA and iTunes media servers and BitTorrent download client. The LCD screen can display photos stored on the hard drive or online photos and content via D-Link’s FrameChannel partner service in addition to status information. Read and write throughput measured via a Vista SP1 file copy measured around 5 MB/s for write and 11 MB/s read from a Gigabit-connected client.

The DIR-685 has 64 MB of RAM and 32 MB of flash and a 2×2 draft 802.11n radio based on a Ralink RT2880F 2T3R MAC/BB and RT2850L 2.4/5 GHz 2T3R transceiver. The radio, however, is locked to single-band 2.4 GHz operation. The processor could not be determined due to a soldered-in radio module over an RF shield. It does not appear Ubicom-based, however, since Ubicom’s signature automatic QoS features are not present in the 685.

The WAN port and four LAN ports are handled by a Realtek RTL8366 Gigabit switch that appears to have support for jumbo frames up to 9K enabled. There is also a small, extremely loud fan that ran constantly during throughput and NAS testing.

Other wireless features include WEP, WPA and WPA2 (both "Personal" and "Enterprise") wireless security, Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) and Guest WLAN with separate traffic, SSID and security settings.

Routing throughput was the fastest we have ever seen with 659 Mbps WAN to LAN and 703 Mbps uplink. Maximum simultaneous sessions maxed out at our test limit of 200.

Best-case (Location A) maximum wireless throughput in the default 20 MHz bandwidth mode measured 78.9 Mbps running downlink and 69.8 Mbps uplink averaged over a 1 minute test. Switching to 40 MHz mode improved throughput to 111.4 and 97.6 Mbps for down and uplink, respectively. Throughput dropped very quickly with distance, however. Although the Intel 5300 test client remained associated in all locations, throughput was not high enough to complete testing in the lowest-signal test locations.

Read the full review.

Related posts

Linksys EA7500 Max-Stream AC1900 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router Reviewed

Updated - Linksys offers MU-MIMO with one less antenna with its EA7500 Max-Stream AC1900 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router.

Draytek Vigor 2900g Broadband Security Router Reviewed

How much would you pay for a four-point SPI router with 802.11g access point, USB print server and built-in VPN endpoint? If you think about $200 is too much, would you change your mind if it handled LAN-LAN and Remote-LAN PPTP, IPsec and L2TP VPN tunnels on both the wired and wireless sides? And how about if it threw in VLAN and Bandwidth control? Come read our review to see how Draytek's Vigor 2900g Broadband Security Router does it all.

New In the Charts: ASUS RT-AX88U

ASUS’ RT-AX88U AX6000 Dual Band 802.11ax WiFi Router has been tested and added to SmallNetBuilder’s Wi-Fi Router Charts. While it ...