D-Link DWL-G710 Wireless Range Extender, 802.11g, 54Mbps

I live in a very rural area on 18 acres and we have a guest house about 300 feet away from the main house. It was impossible to get service at the guest house and a friend recommended this particular wireless extender. I am a totally non-technical person. The product works great and I just ordered a second one to get wireless to another area on the property. I did have some trouble setting it up. I called the technical support number they provided after getting stuck fairly early on in the process. They were able to walk me through the installation and stayed on the phone with me until it was working properly. There was no waiting time. The first person elevated me to a supervisor at which point it took about 15 minutes to configure. It was worth the call and the time it took. When I get the additional extender he suggested I just call Technical Support immediately rather than hassle the set-up myself. I couldn't be happier with the product. I can move it around the main house, take it up to the guest house and so far it has worked perfectly. Distance wise I have had the extender as far away as 300 feet from the linksys router and still getting 54 mbps. I do find my laptop needs to be within a few hundred feet (max) of the extender to get the best service. Walls, other wireless devices, other electronics don't seem to interfere at all with the service.

Rule number 1: Update the firmware.. without the update, the device is brain-dead. Rule number 2: Forget support: an email describing my problems (brain-deadness) went unanswered for 2 weeks, by then I had fumbled to my own cure. One might think a device like this might arrive with the latest firmware, not stuff more than two years old. Device is functional as advertised not withstanding a bad taste left by D-link support.

Here are a few additions to the reviews posted previously. #1 - I tried updating the firmware, but the date of the firmware on the unit itself was 12 2005, and it would not update with more recent one. Nevertheless, all security options were there on the original firmware. #2 - If your network has a hidden SSID or you have MAC lock (address filtering) on, this extender will NOT connect. You have to disable both before connecting. #3 - In my case, the wizard did it's job minus the fact that it did not assign the gateway (which should be, again, the same as the IP for your router - usually something like 192.168.0.1). There were no spaces in front of the network name as reported by some users. #4 - the router itself (IMPORTANT) was assigning the addresses only in the range from 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.199 which would not let the repeater on the network. You have to either go into the router and widen the range anywhere from 192.168.0.29 on or change the default IP of the extender to let's say 192.168.0.130. #5 - Once your extender is on the network, you can re-enable the MAC address filtering as well as hidden SSID, but since the extender continues to broadcast the SSID no matter what, you will just have to live with it. Make sure you DO NOT leave your password blank on either router or extender (which are default factory settings). Also, please do not use variants of "PASS" or "PASSWORD" (like PASSS or PWRD). #6 - Do yourself a favor and read the reviews on this site BEFORE you install (especially from Craig Dickson, Jamie Vachon, Uri Teitler, E. Isaakov, and Ken "Just another computer user" (the last one is the most helpful). #7 - I put it in the garage under our addition. Most of my machines would not connect there (~20 feet from the router WITH an upgraded omni directional antenna, 2 brick walls) and now the signal has risen from 10 % to 90-100%). No diminshment in the speed I can see.

Mine is working and doing what I wanted it to do. It boosts the signal on 1 computer upstairs to "very strong," and it gave my other computer (which was unable to receive a signal at all) a fairly strong signal. It increased signal strength from 15% to 50% in the corner of the house on a different floor. Works well! FYI, here is what I have it connected to in my network. My network is probably the most bastardized network out there - some cheap no-name networking devices, but they work very well!!! Router: Linksys Wireless G Router - WRT54G $50 Extender: D-Link Extender - DWL-710 $30 (refurb) Laptop: Network Everywhere Notebook Adapter - NWP11B $30 at Wal-mart Friends Laptop: Linksys PCMCIA Wireless Adapter - WPC54G $50 PC#1: Trendware PCI card - TEW-423PI $11 (after rebate) PC#2: Belkin USB wireless adapter - F5D7050 $40 at Wal-Mart So much for the advice that you should keep all wireless devices the same brand. I loved the Linksys router (and also their wired router), but their PCI cards suck very badly. In the past, I also used a D-link PCI card with the above Linksys router. Interoperability between brands is not a problem as you can see. Anyway, back to the D-Link extender. I subtracted one star because of the difficulty of setup and crappy directions. Buried deep in the manual it does tell you to set your PC's static address in order to get into the extender - I am sure a lot of people either miss this or can't figure it out. It also tells you to set the gateway. If it were not for Uri Teitler's pointers below, I would still be struggling with it. Just follow his directions and you should be OK. His IP addresses also happen to correspond perfectly with the Linksys wireless router that I am using. I will warn you however; this device is not really for the total amateur. You have to understand IP and MAC addresses, gateways, and how to change them. Again, follow Uri Teitler's message below. Bottom line, it is tricky to talk to this thing and even trickier to set it up. I have a feeling that most of the clowns who gave it bad reviews and claimed they could not set it up simply do not know what the hell they are doing and have no trouble-shooting skills. Solid product - especially since I got it refurbished from geeks.com for $30.