Once You Go Gigabit, You Never Go Back
I've heard people dissing on new technologies before, so when I heard people *****ing and moaning about the new hotness in cabled networking, gigabit aka Base1000, I wasn't surprised. Like most, at the beginning I thought that having so many bits per second was just useless because my internet connection was capped at only a mere fraction of that anyways. To me, buying a 100$+ router at the time just to get a boxed labeled gaming and some fresh new technology compatible with only one box on my network sounded like a stupid idea.
But these days are over. Thanks to my employer's super duper employee discounts and my habit of buying things impulsively as soon as I think I'm comfortable with my money, I have gotten my paws on a brand new D-Link DIR-655, the hot new router of tomorrow.
Just by the outside, you know this thing means business. Black on white, super bright blue (not green like pictured) LED indicators, not one, not two, but THREE antennae... I know the antennae probably do close to nothing, but they still look pretty awesome.
Performance-wise also, this thing is very impressive. Although I don't have some real world benchmarks and comparisons, because you know, I really was in a hurry to plug the damned thing in, I feel a significant boost in my general computing experience. Coupled with a local DNS cache and the OpenDNS servers upstream, I can see a significant reduction in load times, probably dued to the fact that my DNS requests to my home server have less latency. But I guess that it is under greater network load that the extra mbits/second would really make a second. As for the wireless, I currently possess no 802.11N devices, but the signal on G devices is stronger throughout the house, probably because of the rangebooster feature and the triple antennae.
And all the other features are cool too. I've been waiting years for a router with a USB port, and finally this one has exactly what I want.
I'll try to get some benchies for you guys... but so far, I'm very happy with my migration to the newer networking technologies.
But these days are over. Thanks to my employer's super duper employee discounts and my habit of buying things impulsively as soon as I think I'm comfortable with my money, I have gotten my paws on a brand new D-Link DIR-655, the hot new router of tomorrow.
Just by the outside, you know this thing means business. Black on white, super bright blue (not green like pictured) LED indicators, not one, not two, but THREE antennae... I know the antennae probably do close to nothing, but they still look pretty awesome.
Performance-wise also, this thing is very impressive. Although I don't have some real world benchmarks and comparisons, because you know, I really was in a hurry to plug the damned thing in, I feel a significant boost in my general computing experience. Coupled with a local DNS cache and the OpenDNS servers upstream, I can see a significant reduction in load times, probably dued to the fact that my DNS requests to my home server have less latency. But I guess that it is under greater network load that the extra mbits/second would really make a second. As for the wireless, I currently possess no 802.11N devices, but the signal on G devices is stronger throughout the house, probably because of the rangebooster feature and the triple antennae.
And all the other features are cool too. I've been waiting years for a router with a USB port, and finally this one has exactly what I want.
I'll try to get some benchies for you guys... but so far, I'm very happy with my migration to the newer networking technologies.
Total Comments 3
Comments
-
I never dissed on Gigabit... not once.
Everybody knows that gigabit is the future, but I haven't seen a single person (better informed) complain or diss it.
Wireless N? That's a different story.
I don't know about you, but almost everyone here on OCN likes gigabit. I'd run it myself if I could afford it (100 ft of Cat 6 = $60, not to mention the router).Posted 11-20-08 at 04:09 AM by legoman786
-
I'm a bit of a networking noob. Care to elaborate on what gigabit even is?Posted 04-06-09 at 11:04 PM by wierdo124
-
wierdo124, standard ethernet (10Base-X) transfers data at 1.25 MB/s. "Fast ethernet" (100Base-X) transfers data at 12.5 MB/s.. Now Gigabit ethernet (1000Base-X) transfers data at 125 MB/s, completely blowning standard ethernet data transfer rates out of the water.
It's absolutely wonderful for local area networks, as it beats the hell out of both other ethernet types and USB. I use it all the time to transfer files from my machines to and from my laptop. Very useful when time is critical or you just don't like waiting very long.
Also, legoman786, you ought to check out both www.monoprice.com and www.deepsurplus.com for cat-6 cables. Deepsurplus sells a 100' in traditional blue for ~$19, and I believe monoprice may be lower... But as of current it's down.Posted 04-08-09 at 05:16 AM by timxirish
