D-LINK AIMS FOR THE MASSES
D -Link’s external chassis team obviously have a thing for giant robotic spiders, while its marketing team just likes high prices. The DIR-879 fills both needs, looking suitably evil, while carrying a premium street price for its AC1900Mbit/sec capability. Is it worth it though?
The four “legs” you can see are actually antennae, but they only fold out there’s no way to adjust the direction they’re pointing, which is a bummer. However, this router does incorporate beamforming tech in the form of SmartBeam, which electronically adjusts each antennae to optimize the direction the signals are travelling.
Unlike most recent D-Link routers we’ve seen of late, this is aimed at your normal household kind of users. There’s just 1900Mb/sec of combined bandwidth one 5GHz and one 2.4GHz network. Four Gigabit Ethernet ports adorn the rear of the chassis, along with a WAN port, but there’s no USB slot for a printer or storage. D-Link’s interface has been extremely user friendly for over a year now, but advanced networkers will find the lack of options frustrating. Automatic or manual Quality of Service is to be expected, but it only allows you to priorities a single main device.
It’s all powered by a dual core Realtek RTL8198CS processor, while the radio chipset is a 3×3 solution in the 5GHz band, which will ensure very solid performance. There’s no MU-MIMO accreditation, though many routers in the industry that claim this don’t actually have it working properly.
There’s no denying this is an eye catching, easy to setup router with decent specs, and yet you can buy something else without that bright orange chassis for a solid less. Bennett Ring
KEY SPECS
Dual 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks · 3×3 radio/antennae setup · dual core processor · 4 x Gigabit Ethernet · 802.11ac and back.