Features and Design

Ever since the earth cooled, home networking routers have looked all business, with very little attention paid to their aesthetic appeal. After all, most people just stick the router on a shelf somewhere and never think about it again. But, that’s all starting to change as routers are growing wings, sprouting faceplates, and starting to look, dare we say, “cool?” Linksys started this trend with its warship-looking Wireless N Gigabit Gaming Router.

*Editor's note 8/17/07 -  D-link refutes this claim and argues, "Linksys didn't start this trend. D-Link did with the DGL-4300/4100 Gaming Router. This was the first router to sport blue LEDs, have Gigabit ports, use QoS to kill lag."

Now, D-Link has jumped into the fray with its DIR-660 Limited Edition Wireless N router. Though it’s still a bit plain-looking with its all-white exterior, this router’s pièce de résistance is its large OLED display. In case you didn’t know, OLED is the new hotness (at least compared to boring old LEDs), because OLED displays don’t require a backlight to operate and are just as bright, but use less power. Yeah, we know that doesn’t sound too exciting, but tell your buddies that your router has an OLED display and they will be jealous.

Even more important than its outward appearance is its performance. As its title implies, this is an 802.11N router, which promises an insane speed boost over the previous specs named 802.11B and 802.11G. It’s able to offer more wireless speed, because it employs a technology called MIMO, which stands for Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output, which is a fancy way of saying “multiple antennae.” Think RAID for wireless networks, where it’s able to combine the power of multiple signals into one super signal. For a quick primer, B speeds were 11Mbps, and G is 54Mbps, but N is anywhere from144Mbps to 250Mbps. It’s important to note that this router can broadcast at all the legacy speeds and works just fine with B and G adapters.

The front of the router has the typical lights for power and LAN connections, while the rear of the unit has four LAN ports, a USB port, and an AC power jack.

The DIR-660 can broadcast at B, G, N, or all three at once

It should be noted that the N spec is not officially ratified yet by the committee that does these ratifications. They are scheduled to meet in their star chamber in September 2008 to vote on the spec.

Security options include everything you could hope for, including legacy WEP if you want to run the router in B or G modes, and WPA for running it at N speed.

The router also includes a handy Flash-based setup guide and a trial version of Network Magic if you are new to home networking and don’t want to hassle with tweaking settings in Windows.