D-Link Wireless N300 Range Extender DAP-1320

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Pros Excellent signal coverage. Easy setup. Small size for easy placement.

Cons May require setup near router. Wi-Fi network changes may require a reset. Bottom Line D-Link has a new wireless range extender that not only is one of the smallest you'll find on the market, but is incredibly easy to set up and provides terrific coverage.

By Samara Lynn

D-Link has a new wireless range extender that's not only one of the smallest you'll find on the market, but is incredibly easy to set up and delivers terrific coverage. In fact, the D-Link Wireless N300 Range Extender (DAP-1320) was able to sustain the most throughput at long distance of any wireless range extender I've tested. Even better, I tested it not with a D-Link router, but with a competing vendor's router, and the device still worked without a hitch.

Design
The DAP-1320 looks like a power adapter—it's only 2.11 by 1.65 by 1.89 inches (HWD)  with two prongs, and it plugs directly into an electrical outlet. This simple yet powerful piece of wireless technology has just a single WPS button on its side and one LED to show you connection status.

The extender is single-band only, so it won't extend 5GHz Wi-Fi, which is perfectly okay, because it's the 2.4GHz band that can travel longer distance.

Included in the package are a quick install guide and a card that has the extender's default SSID and password as well as the URL to the web-based GUI printed on it.

Setup
The installation guide suggests that best placement for the extender is mid-way between the router and the Wi-Fi clients you are connecting to the router. In my testing environment, that placement proved to be too far from the router for set up. No problem: I performed setup with the extender about 5 feet from the router and then, once the extender was connected, moved it to a more central location.

You can set up the DAP-1320 using WPS or by connecting to the web GUI. I plugged it in and the LED blinked red, turned green, and then blinked amber. According to the device's instructions, when it blinks amber, you should use WPS to pair the extender with a router.

I used WPS and it worked fine connecting to my router. I did not pair D-Link's extender with a D-Link router. I used another vendor's router, the Western Digital My Net N900; I did this purposely, to see if there would be connection issues with another vendor's equipment. There weren't.

Once the LED turned from amber to solid green I had the extender connected. I reset it back to factory settings to see how the manual setup fared. With the manual method, I plugged in the extender, waited for it to turn amber, and then could connect to the extender's Wi-Fi. After connecting, launching a browser automatically opened the extender's web-based connection setup wizard.

The wizard asks if you want to connect the extender to a router via WPS or Manually.  With a manual connection you can select the network you want to extend and can opt to use the extender's default SSID or set the SSID name and credentials to the Wi-Fi network with which you've connected the extender.

That's the setup process—a few scant minutes, and very easy. I do caution that you may have to connect the extender close to your router and then position it where you want. Also, I made a change to my router's settings that disconnected the extender at one point. I had to reset the extender back to factory settings and set it up again. However I did not mind, since setting up the device is so quick.

Performance
Not only can I sing the praises of the device's incredibly easy setup, but it also delivered praiseworthy performance. It extended my router's signal to an area throughput never reaches, a real dead spot that my testing software, IxChariot, typically registers as 0 Mbps. From 150 feet away from the extender, in an environment saturated with access points, D-Link's little extender still managed .4 Mbps of throughput. Yes, that's not even 1 Mbps of speed, but it was enough to browse the Internet—slowly, but reasonably. While the BearExtender PC Long Range 802.11n USB WiFi Booster gave faster speed at a distance of 100 feet, it dropped the signal at 150 feet. Below is a chart comparing the DAP-1320's performance to other wireless range extenders:

Check out the performance comparisons with the DAP-1320

Extended Excellence
The DAP-1320 is one of the best wireless networking devices I've tested from D-Link, and among all of the extenders I've tested, it provided the best coverage. I was also impressed with how well it worked with another vendor's equipment. I'm confident that this little device, which did an impressive job of extending my test Wi-Fi network deployed in a high-rise office building with hundreds of access points all around, will work extremely well for the average home user. D-Link Wireless Range Extender gets a 4.5 out of 5 star rating, and is PCMag's Editors' Choice for wireless range extenders.

Wireless Witch: DIY Wireless Extenders Put to the Test

Any time I review a wireless extender, some reader typically leaves a comment about just making a homemade extender to avoid paying for one. I finally decided to build my own wireless extender and compare its benchmark results to those of "store-bought" ones. The results? As you'll see, they were bit of a mixed bag, but it's definitely an interesting DIY project.

There are plenty of videos and articles on the Internet about making a DIY wireless extender. The two primary methods include creating a "cantenna"—an extender made from a can and a few additional components; and a parabolic reflector—available as a template cut-out from freeantennas.com. I opted to go with the reflector solution. This consists of printing out a template, which you can download from the site, on hardy media such as business card stock paper and then cutting out and assembling the template in the shape of a parabola lined with aluminum foil.

I downloaded the template, printed it on heavyweight paper, and assembled the extender according to the website's instructions. It's more time-consuming than setting up a typical purchased wireless extender, but the experience was kind of arts-and-crafty fun. I made a pair.

I wanted to test two scenarios: The first was to determine how much the parabolic extender (called Windsurfer) increased signal strength and range with a router that had external antennas. And second, I would test whether the homemade extender had any effect on routers that have internal antennas—as do most high-end routers these days.

I tested using Trendnet's 450 Mbps Concurrent Dual Band Wireless N Router (TEW-692GR), which has three external antennas, and then with Linksys's Smart Wi-Fi AC 1750HD Video Pro EA6500 which uses internal antennas only.

For the Trendnet device, I poked holes on the top and bottom of my homemade extenders and slid them onto the router's left and right antenna, leaving the middle antenna alone.I then ran a few benchmarks using Ixia's IxChariot to test throughput and inSSIDer to test signal strength. First I ran tests without the Windsurfer extenders and then with. Here are my results:

In the same room, I had slight signal strength gain with the extenders, but performance was pretty much the same with or without. At 50 feet, I see quite a noticeable gain using the extenders. Signal bars first were at 3, then I went down to 2. Unfortunately though, the wireless signal was not consistent, and eventually my connection dropped—that's why I couldn't run throughput tests.

So, yes, the extender did help at 50 feet, though the connection was flaky. That may be due to all the RF interference where I tested.

Extending Routers with Internal Antennas
It might seem that you would only benefit from this type of homemade extender on routers with external antennas. Most premium consumer routers are now shipping with internal antennas. I duct-taped the pair of extenders to Linksys' Smart Wi-Fi AC 1750HD Video Pro EA650 router, which has internal antennas. Here's what I saw:

In the case with the router with internal antennas, the extender did not help the signal at 50 feet away and actually seemed to impede performance. But it significantly improved throughput at shorter ranges.

Making a parabolic reflector is certainly cheaper than buying a Wi-Fi extender from a vendor. I only had to buy business card stock paper ($9.99), aluminum foil ($2.00), and an X-Acto knife ($2.00). But you may have all of this stuff lying around anyway. Manufactured extenders can range from $40 for BearExtender's PC Long Range 802.11n USB WiFi Booster up to $120 for D-Link's Amplifi DAP-1525 Wi-Fi Booster (a device that we rated only as "Fair."). So there is definitely a cost advantage with homemade units.

Based on my testing, however, you don't get that big a boost with a homemade parabolic reflector at 50 feet and beyond, although I did read that if you make the template larger to make a larger parabola and reflector, you can perhaps boost the signal a bit more. How willing you are to put up giant foil-coated reflectors in your home to save a few bucks probably says a lot about you, however. As you can see from the table below, the purchased extenders were little more effective in boosting a router's signal at further distances, such as BareExtender's which still managed decent throughput at 75 feet.

Click here for manufactured wireless extender throughput results

The Verdict
Freeantenna.com's homemade extender is easy to make, and DIY types or those looking for a cool science project may find it just the thing. I personally found it tedious cutting out the figures from the template and a little tricky getting the thing assembled, though. If you have the time, have perhaps an older, or lower-end router with external antennas, and want to save a few bucks, it's worth testing it out—especially if you're looking to boost signal over a short range. If you need consistent signal boosting in a larger area, or for a small business, you'll likely want to stick with a purchased Wi-Fi extender, and preferably one made by the same company that made your router.

Note: In the above two charts, signal strength is incorrectly referenced as "decibels." The measurements displayed are actually in "dBm."

ESPN Considering Plan to Subsidize Wireless Data Plans

Rule No. 1 for anyone who streams content on a mobile device is: connect to a Wi-Fi network whenever possible. That might seem like common sense, but not everyone is aware that linking your smartphone or tablet to a home Wi-Fi network can help you avoid bumping up against your wireless provider's monthly data cap.

Bloomberg revealed this week that on an average weeknight, about one-third of all North American Internet traffic belongs to Netflix. But ESPN also offers a popular streaming service, allowing sports fans to tune in to live games, watch replays, and keep up with favorite players. And it appears that streaming ESPN over mobile is very popular, despite the bandwidth drawbacks.

Mobile streaming is quite lucrative for ESPN - so much so that the sports network is considering a deal with wireless carriers that would have ESPN subsidize your mobile streaming sports binges, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The paper said ESPN has talked with at least one U.S. wireless provider about scenarios whereby watching ESPN content would not count against customers' monthly data caps. Talks are still in the early stages, and, as the Journal noted, such an arrangement might run into some regulatory troubles.

Last year, it was revealed that customers who subscribe to Comcast's Xfinity TV service for the Xbox 360 wouldn't be charged for the service's data use against the ISP's 250GB monthly cap. But that prompted complaints about net neutrality violations - most notably, from Netflix. Comcast denied any wrongdoing.

If legal issues can be ironed out, however, it could help boost ESPN's end-of-the-month viewing. According to the Journal, at least one carrier told ESPN that "significant numbers" of users hit their bandwidth limits before the end of the month, prompting a drop-off in ESPN usage until the following month's plan kicks in.

An ESPN spokeswoman declined to comment.