Greg King – Techgage

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] If you've visited Techgage lately you might have read through the pair of reviews covering TRENDnet's offering to the wireless N crowd. In looking at both the TEW-631BRP and the TEW-633GR, we liked each router for completely different reasons. We were impressed with the pricing and wireless N performance of the 631BRP while the gigabit LAN ports and unmatched wireless performance earned the 633GR an editor's choice award. While impressed, we walked away from our testing with a sobering thought that not everyone needs this new wireless format, 802.11n. For those of you out there using your wireless connection to surf the â€&tilde;net or check your email, your existing setup of more than likely wireless G is more than likely more than enough to keep your digital experience up to speed. Those that could use the added bandwidth that N brings are those who stream media, high definition media to be precise, from a PC or a media server to a set top player. Even gamers don't really need the extra performance that wireless N brings to the table. While the actual need for the additional speed that N brings might not be for everyone, the longer reach of the wireless protocol is something that practically everyone can appreciate. With a significantly larger range of service, wireless N allows us to venture further away from our home router than ever before. With all of the benefits of wireless N, and the examples of what it can provide clearly listed above, one of the pitfalls of replacing a home router with a shiny new one has nothing at all to do with which wireless protocol it uses. So many of us use our routers as a first line of defense from external threats that mean to do us digital harm. For those with children, many routers today allow filters to be setup, effectively eliminating the sites that your child can get to that you would rather they stay away from. Regardless of what you use your router for; there are certainly settings that you would rather not have to setup again and for those of you whom this might apply, TRENDnet might have something that can help you out. Back at CES, we stopped by the TRENDnet booth for many of the same reasons we stop in at any display. Not only did we want to meet with the representatives from each respective company and put faces to names, we also wanted to see what was in the pipes as far as future products are concerned. When we arrived at the TRENDnet display, they were quick to show off the newest member in their wireless N stable, the TEW-637AP. Having not mastered the creative naming skill that only a handful of companies in this industry have, the 637AP falls directly into line with the other products offered by TRENDnet. Instead of BRP (no idea what that stands for) or GR, TRENDnet has branded this new device with an AP which we will come to find out is rather fitting. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Closer Look] The diminutive box that the TEW-637AP ships in should be a welcome site to many. With packaging getting larger and larger (we are looking square at you ASUS), the small size of the 637AP should be a beautiful site to most. With plenty of information about the advantages of wireless N, the packaging of the 637AP is compact but to the point. Bundled with the 637AP are the essentials to get you up and running in little to no time at all. Providing an installation disk containing setup software, a manual, a small Cat5 cable, a vertical stand and power cable, TRENDnet gives us just enough to get up and going. Once out of the box, the 637AP at first glance looks like a small router with its 633GR styling and antennas sticking out of the top. Using the included base, the 637AP can be set up vertically with its pair of rotatable fixed antennas that allow MIMO connections are situated at the top of the device like we saw in the 633GR review. Taking a closer look at the front of the 637AP, there are LED status lights for power, router connection, WPS connection and wireless connections. WPS can only be used with devices that have this feature available so while a nice idea, actual use of this technology in a real world setting is limited by the lack of hardware to use it. Turing the 637AP around, we see a single gigabit Ethernet port for quick connection to the host router, a small reset button and a port for a power cable to be inserted. While only useful when used in tandem with a true gigabit router, the addition of a 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet port on the back of the 637AP eliminates the bottleneck caused by a standard 10/100 ports given the top theoretical speed of wireless N is 300 Mbps. Granted, no one will ever see speeds that high, but going with a gigabit controller just makes sense. As stated earlier, the 637AP resembles the TEW-633GR quite a bit. When using said router as a point of reference, the 637AP's size is seen. This small size should allow most users to hide the unit anywhere they see fit. While TRENDnet includes a small lengths of Cat5 cable, as long as you're within the 100 meter limit of Cat5 (straight runs only, this can be increased with the inclusion of a repeater) you can place the 637AP access point anywhere you need additional wireless coverage but more on this later. Shown below is the way that TRENDnet sees most people using the 637AP. While we are using the TEW-633GR in the pictures, TRENDnet is marketing the 637AP towards those that would like to enjoy the benefits of wireless N but don't want to replace their wired or wireless (speeds of G and below) router. Here you can see the lights in action when connected to a router and powered on. Next, we will tackle setup and installation. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Setup and Installation] Like with the TEW-631BRP and TEW-633GR, the setup process for the 637AP begins with the installation disk. When auto play brings up the welcome screen, we are presented with only four options. Clearly we want to run the setup wizard but if needed, you can access the user's manual (in .pdf form) as well as register your 637AP and exit out of the screen altogether. The first setup screen we come to simply tells us how to connect the "Easy-N-Upgrader" (which is TRENDnet talk for wireless N access point) to your home router. Regardless of the manufacturer or model number, the 637AP is designed to indiscriminately work with any and all router with an open Ethernet port. Next, the small app will scan your network for all connected devices and as seen below, it found the 637AP without any issue at all. Once found, we selected the device and clicked on the configure button at the bottom of the screen. We were then prompted for the default security password (logon credentials are admin:admin). This allows us to log into the 637AP from this point on but it's recommended that you change the password to something a little more unique. You can choose whether or not the 637AP gets its IP address dynamically or if you would prefer it to retain the same address statically forever and ever... or until you change it to something else. Once you choose how the device is going to obtain it's IP you can then either setup your wireless configuration manually or allow WPS to do the dirty work for you. Basically you press the WPS button on the 637AP and it will auto associate with your wireless adapter. Sadly we do not have such an adapter in our lab but fortunately for us, they are quite uncommon and most people do not have them. When prompted to create your wireless network SSID, you can use the default TRENDnet637 or you can create your own. While this will communicate with anything on your other device connected to your wireless router, assuming said devices are on the same subnet, you will want to give the 637AP a unique SSID so you know what you are connecting to. For this review, we left the name at its default. As with any wireless network, encryption is HIGHLY encouraged by us here at Techgage. TRENDnet offers both major encrypting methods on the 637AP which is nice. You can go with the older WEP which is relatively easy to crack for those that have a bit of time and know what they are doing or you can opt for the far more secure WPA or WPA2. The problem with WPA is that there are many older wireless adapters that do not support this method of security and if you're one of those with such a device, you will have to use WEP. The ending screen shows us the settings that we just setup and allows us to print these settings for future reference as well as save our configurations. After they are saved, we are given a gigantic thumbs up from TRENDnet letting us know that the 637AP is setup and ready to go. From here, we will get into the 637AP's web interface and poke around to see what the access point has to offer. Once we have the 637AP setup to our liking, we can get into the 637AP's UI by entering in the IP address of the AP itself. We found the IP by logging into our TEW-633GR and viewing the devices that have been given IPs by the router. In our case, the IP was 192.168.1.123 but this will vary from network to network. Once at the setup page, we first see the "network" section of the 637AP's web interface. In this area we can give the 637AP a static IP address or continue to use the AP as a DHCP client. In the next section, we have a slew of options that actually control how the 637AP acts. Here we can control at what kind of connections we will allow dependent upon the devices we will be connecting to the network. The 637AP can be setup to work with b, g or n clients or any combination of the three and can even be setup to work on any of 11 frequencies in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Should you want to setup multiple SSIDs you can do that here as well. You can even monitor associated devices in this section as well letting the administrator keep track of what devices are connected through this AP. In the final tab, you can monitor uptime, upgrade the system firmware, export your settings to a local machine connected to...

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