D-Link DIR-865L Wireless 802.11AC Router Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,223 words · ~6 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing and first look at DLink's next generation premium router.
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This is the DIR865L.
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It is a dualband AC router. Now, I mean,
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nobody consulted with me about this. Nobody asked me what I thought before
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they called the next generation wireless AC.
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I I can't understand why they didn't ask me what I thought, but I think it's just
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the most ridiculous thing in the world because you got A and then you got B and
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then we skipped to G and then we were like, well, okay, well, we skipped
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letters before, so we'll go to N this time. And then they're like, "Oh, well,
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there's all these letters left in the alphabet. So, why don't we just go back to A and put a C on it instead of going
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with like, I don't know, wireless X for extreme or like anyway, wireless AC is
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faster and more better." Um, particularly the 5 gigahertz band is
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better utilized with wireless AC to be more faster and more better, but that
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doesn't prevent these routers from being backwards compatible. So, this guy right
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here uses Where we got? Yeah. So it has
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combined 1300 AC plus 450N for a maximum
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total throughput of it being capable of 1750 megabit per second which is very
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very very cool stuff. And what it means is that unlike some other AC routers on
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the market, this will not be a downgrade for all of your end devices. Cuz
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remember guys, if you have a wireless AC router that's 1300 AC and only 150N or
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300N, what that means is every end device on your network is actually going
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to be operating at a slower speed than if you just had a high-end N router. So,
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think about that for a minute. Be careful when you upgrade because if you
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don't have any AC devices, you might be actually downgrading your wireless
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speeds. So, let's see what else DLink has to say for themselves about this
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guy. So, yep. Yep. AC and compliant
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concurrent dual band 2.4 4 GHz and 5 gigahertz my llink cloud services share
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port allows you to share you know files to various apps and whatever else you
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want that's basically what they call a USB storage port um and then the mobile
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app is what they call their mobile app that helps you share stuff anyway
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integrated intelligent antenna with high powered amplifier gigabit Ethernet ports
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USB 2 media QoS okay that's good
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uh that pretty much covers it okay gigabit ports are 10 times yeah but I
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mean it's hard to it's hard to call gigabit ports a selling point anymore.
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For me, it's more like you just shouldn't buy anything with 1000 ports.
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Fastest AC. Yep. Okay. And package
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contents, my cloud services. Ah, so you can manage your home network from your
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iPhone, iPad, or Android device. So, this is like Cisco's cloud connect,
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except I haven't tried this one yet. So, I hope it's a little bit uh I hope it's
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a little bit sort of more um easy to get around, I guess, would
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be, you know, or maybe if you want to use it, maybe it's maybe it's more awesome. Check your networking speeds.
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Reboot your router. See connected and blocked devices in real time. Okay, that's all kind of cool stuff. So, let's
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go ahead and have a look at the router itself. It comes with a quick start
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guide. Okay,
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Amplify branding for this guy. So, I believe that was
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what they used for their whole home router as well in terms of branding and
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positioning. And in that particular product, it referred to the
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directionality of the antennas that achieved helped it achieve better
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overall range, which I did test and did end up being true, which is very cool
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because a lot of the time, you know, you get like, oh, this wireless router is 10
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times the range of your old one and you actually like plug it in and you're
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like, well, no, it isn't. Um, because I'm using my phone now in the same place
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I used it last time, and it's exactly the same.
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This is a very shiny product, as you can clearly see. We can do the old like test
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to find out how glossy it is. You can probably see that it will get quite
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scratched quite quickly. But the good news is that it's a router, so if it's
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ugly, it doesn't matter. And you can probably hide it somewhere. Anyway,
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look, we can see Slick. Whoa. Oh my goodness. It's Slick. Holy crap. Um, for
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those of you who haven't tuned in already, we do live streams every Friday night. And you can see Slick there.
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Anyway, so what do we got here? Four gigabit Ethernet ports in the back for
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your local network, your WAN port. So, you plug your modem into that. You got
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your USB share port. Got a power button. Very nice. Hard reset switch, 12vt
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input, and at the front you got a couple more things. So, you got power
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indicator, interwebs indicator, as well as a WPS button. The bottom stand seems
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like it should be removable because there's like there's plastic on it that
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Hold on. Let me see if I can figure out how to get this off. So, I've never seen
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anything quite like this before. There's two warranty void if removed stickers
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here. And then they seem to be screwed into the base. And then um there's
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actually like a plastic thing here that you'd probably want to remove somehow.
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And I'm not Yeah, I mean you I guess you could get it off somehow, but it's just
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sort of trickier. Okay. Okay, I got it. I got this.
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There we go. So that's how that works. So there basically guys, what's the
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point of AC routers? Well, they're faster. We don't have many AC clients
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yet. However, DLink does have an AC1200 client. So, we're going to unbox this at
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some point in the f Whoops. future. Hopefully, it's not broken now. Um,
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yeah, it just makes your wireless go faster, particularly at slightly shorter
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range. Remember guys, 5 GHz is a higher frequency. So, that means the wavelength
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is much shorter, which means that while you can apparently carry more data on
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it, it's not quite as effective over long ranges as 2.4 GHz. However, with
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the improvements they've been making to antenna technology as well as the
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transmission strength, 5 GHz has almost
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caught up to 2.4 GHz to the point where I would personally, assuming I had AC
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clients, take the benefit of the additional speed over the slight benefit
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of more range. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look
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at the DLink DIR865L wireless AC router.
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Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and
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