Award winning Storage Router

Powerful Award-Winning Draft N Technology D Link Storage Router

By Ki Grinsing

When you would like to build a wireless network securely at home, you need a wireless router. With a fast high performance wireless router, you need the router with the fastest draft 802.11n wireless technology available today such as wireless-N router (the price starts from $70 up to $300). When you would like to share storage to be accessible across the network and also accessible across the Internet, you need a Network Access Storage (NAS) which the price can start from $75 up to hundreds of dollars. With NAS you can manage the share files that can be accessed by the authorized users either across the local network or across the internet. Or you might need a FTP server for the Internet users to download the files from.

D-Link offers an award winning DIR-685 Storage Router which combines the superior features of a draft 802.11n wireless router, a Network Access Storage (NAS), a built-in FTP server, and a built-in Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) AV server. Not just that, DIR-685 also featuring digital photo frame and D-Link Green power saving which creates the ultimate user experience while conserving energy. Sounds great, right?

Sharing the Internet

To share the broadband Internet, you need to connect the WAN port of this DIR-685 Storage router to the cable or DSL modem. If you have already had a "wired" Gigabit backbone LAN in your office you can connect this Gigabit LAN port to your LAN backbone as an Access Point to the wireless network. If you are connecting the D-Link router to another router to use as a wireless access point and/or switch, you will have to do the following before connecting the router to your network:

Disable UPnP Disable DHCP Chan ge the LAN IP address to an available address on your network. The LAN ports on the router cannot accept a DHCP address from your other router.

High-speed Wireless and Wired Network Connection

DIR-685 Storage Router operates based on draft 802.11n the fastest wireless standard available today using single band 2.4GHz signal, allows you experience full wireless coverage throughout your home network. Using the smart intelligent MIMO technology, DIR-685 D Link Storage Router provides you faster speed experience and longer range within the house or the office. MIMO uses multiple transmitter and receiver antennas to improve the system performance. MIMO is a technology which uses multiple antennas to coherently resolve more information than possible using a single antenna. MIMO technology relies on multipath signals. Multipath signals are the reflected signals arriving at the receiver some time after the line of sight (LOS) signal transmissio n has been received. In a non-MIMO based 802.11a/b/g network, multipath signals were perceived as interference degrading a receiver's ability to recover the message information in the signal. MIMO technology uses the multipath signal's diversity to increase a receiver's ability to recover the message information from the signal.

D-Link DIR-685 Storage Router supports four built-in Gigabit Ethernet ports Switch, allows you connect using "wired" connection to the Gigabit NIC desktop computers for high speed connection. This will boost the speed of uploading photos and file documents from Gigabit desktop computers to your storage router using the File Uploader Widget Tool. The widget allows you to choose specific files from your desktop PC and view the upload status to your router.

Besides featuring the wireless-N with Xtreme N technology that allows for farther home coverage, this Xtreme N Storage router is also featuring an Intelligent Wireless prioriti zation Technology. And as other wireless routers, you can connect using the latest wireless security WPA/WPA2 encryption for secure wireless connection. Adding the devices to the network is done by using Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) touch-sensitive button.

The router also supports double firewall features: NAT (network address translation) and SPI (stateful packet inspection). NAT is a primary method enabling computers with unregistered IP addresses to access the Internet. NAT functions as an intermediary between a client computer on an unregistered network and the Internet. Some IP NAT implementations include additional security capabilities, typically a technique called stateful packet inspection. Stateful packet inspection is a generic term for a process in which the IP NAT router examines the incoming packets from the Internet more carefully than usual.

Share Storage over a Network or Internet

The beauty of this DIR-685 storage router is the ability to hold a compact 2.5" hard drive SATA up to 1 TB and includes a built-in Network Access Storage (NAS), which allows you to safely store files on your home network. A built-in FTP server is also included to allow you convenient access t o storage wherever Internet is available. But the use of FTP server over an internet should be done through VPN pass-through for secure connection because accessing the files over the internet does not provide secure or encrypted transmission. This D Link storage router supports VPN pass-through; multi-sessions PPTP; and L2TP using IPSec for secure remote access to the storage router.

You can also access and store digital media directly from the Internet without the need for a dedicated PC to be turned on or connected by using the feature this storage router supports The BitTorrent Support.

Internet Photo Frame

The other beauty of this D Link storage router is the Internet Photo Frame feature. You can share your latest photos with family and friends using FrameChannel, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and other popular photo sharing sites using your FrameChannel account. You can also use the DIR-685 storage router to subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds. Get the latest news, stock updates, sports scores, clock, calendar, weather conditions, and more directly on your frame.

Shareport Technology

With two USB 2.0 ports, you can connect a printer and an external storage device to share throughout your network. You can even share a multifunction printer. You don't need to share the printer via the print-share desktop computer, anytime you want to print from the Wi-Fi notebook from anywhere within the wireless coverage just do it, you don't need to turn on the print-share computer. SharePort is Mac compatible.

Video Streaming

DIR-685 storage router supports a built-in Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) AV server that allows you to easily stream HD video files; music and photos stored on your network through a compatible media player onto your flat-screen HD television via media center extender. You can even stream files from your Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 gamin g system. With the high performance of wireless-N network, you can go Xbox LIVE wirelessly in the comfort of your living room without the clutter of the wires.

No wonder this DIR-685 Storage Router receives an award winning product for its rich functions in one box.

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