Interface
Diamond has whipped up a very nice interface for WR300NSI. Complete with detailed graphics, animations, hand holding wizards, and manual configurations, at first glance, it doesn’t seem like anything could be wrong. But there is one hidden problem, lurking.
If your WPA network key contains a period, ampersand, forward slash, or backslash, be prepared for WR300NSI to freeze up and truncate your network key at any of the aforementioned characters. WR300NSI’s interface runs on ASP (not sure why), and whoever programmed it seems to have missed escaping special characters, thus WR300NSI freezing and truncating the input. Other than that issue, WR300NSI’s interface is impressive for a wireless range extender.
Testing
Now that your wireless signal has been extended, we want to know how well it’ll perform. Let’s take a look at what equipment was used:
Laptop: MacBook Pro. 2.4GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB RAM, OSX Mavericks
Mobile: iPad 4 32GB WiFi only (M-Edge Supershell case. Unknown effect on wireless performance)
Main router: Buffalo WZR-600DHP
The testing process was simple, load up speedtest.net in Chrome on MacBook Pro, and speedtest.net’s iOS app on iPad 4.
WR300NSI’s ethernet port isn’t just for configuring the device, it will also act as a wired passthrough. In other words, you can use WR300NSI as a client to any device that only has wired connectivity, like an older Xbox 360, or laptop. I used my MacBook Pro to test out WR300NSI’s ethernet port. To my surprise, speeds were equal to what I’d get if I were directly connected to the router. However, wireless speeds were a bit of a different story.Even standing about 1 foot from WR300NSI, wireless speeds on iPad 4 and MacBook Pro were about 15Mbps down, half of what it was when wired. But, upload speed was able to still achieve the maximum.
