D-Link Wireless AC1200 Dual Band USB Adapter (DWA-182)

D-Link has the distinction of being the first networking hardware vendor with a pre-draft 802.11ac wireless adapter on the market. The Wireless AC1200 Dual Band USB Adapter (DWA-182) ($79.00, street) can connect notebooks and laptops to pre-draft 802.11ac routers and can do so through push-button WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup).However, during testing, I was unable to connect via WPS to a draft 802.11ac router other than D-Link's. Even when connected to D-Link's own 802.11ac router, the D-Link Amplifi Cloud Router 5700 (DIR-856L) , throughput reached nowhere near the touted speeds of up to 857 Mbps on the 5GHz band?and only slighted boosted performance over that of an 802.11n adapter.

Of course, I don't expect any router?to come close to theoretical speeds in real-world environments. However, because the DWA-182 is 802.11ac-capable, when it's paired with an 802.11ac router, I so expect that throughput should be faster than with an 802.11n adapter. Since network speed is only as fast as your slowest link, I expected an 802.11ac adapter tested with an 802.11ac router to provide faster throughput than testing the same 802.11ac router with an 802.11n adapter. Remember, 802.11 only provides theoretical throughout of up to 450 Mbps on the 5GHz band.?

?The DWA-182 supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. It's also backward compatible, so you can use it with just about any wireless router?so long as you aren't trying to use WPS.

The adapter is rather wide, measuring 3.8 by 1.1 by 0.5 inches (LWH). If a notebook has stacked USB ports, the DWA-182, when connected to the uppermost port, will likely block the bottom one.

WPA and WPA2 as well as 128-bit WEP, and of course WPS, are all supported. The WPS button and a tiny, blue LED are located on the top of the adapter.

Setup
The adapter is so new that my Windows 7 laptop was unable to install or recognize drivers for it upon connection.? This isn't a problem since D-Link ships a CD with the DWA-182. The CD contains not only the driver, install guide, and user manual, but also free trials of Norton Internet Security 2012 and Norton Online Backup.

The CD kicks off an installation wizard. During install, the wizard prompts to either manually type in the SSID and password to the network you want to connect to, or to use WPS.

I opted to install via WPS. The wizard instructs to click the WPS button on the router and then click the "Connect Now" button on-screen. I first tried connecting to a Linksys draft 802.11ac router but the WPS connection failed. I had no problems connecting to D-Link's AC router, the DIR-865L via WPS.

Now of course, I could manually connect to the Linksys 802.11ac router. However, WPS is a standard and is not supposed to be a proprietary technology; that would defeat the purpose of easy push-button setup of wireless devices. Hopefully, the failure of the DWA-182 to not connect to the Linksys router can be attributed to some wonkiness due to this being pre-draft 802.11ac technology and vendor incompatibility issues won't be a problem when products come to market that are fully 802.11ac? certified.

?During install, you can also opt to scan for wireless networks in proximity and connect to them if you don't know the name of the SSID. It's an easy setup but WPS should work for any WPS-capable router.

Wireless Utility
The installation process also includes the install of D-Link's Wireless Connection Manager. I typically don?t like third-party wireless managers sitting on top of the Windows native wireless management because the utility usually makes adjusting any settings through Windows Network and Sharing interface useless.? D-Link's utility did not prevent me from using Windows wireless networking settings, though.

?The utility displays all wireless networks in proximity. You can connect to a network through the manager and it shows signal strength, the channel the network is on and whether the network is secured or not. I like the fact that it shows percentage of signal strength and the channel the wireless network is operating on, information that Windows does not show natively.

Networks you connect to most frequently are listed in the utility under My Wireless Networks, and there's a quick link to D-Link support. The utility is not necessary to use, but it does provide a bit more insight into a wireless networks than the operating system alone.

Performance
I was disappointed with performance. I did not see anywhere near the speeds vendors are claiming about 802.11ac, and just a sight bump in performance in 5 GHz 802.11ac mode. Below is a table comparing throughput testing D-Link's DIR-865L router using a standard 802.11n 3xe3 wireless adapter versus the DWA-182 in Mixed 11ac mode:

802.11n testing was performed with an HP Elitebook with an integrated Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN wirelessly connected to the DIR-865L; a Windows server machine with a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet card connected to a LAN port on the DIR-865L and Ixia's IxChariot throughput script.

11ac testing was performed with the same equipment and script but for the exception: the Intel Centrino wireless adapter was disabled on the Elitebook and the DWA-182 adapter installed.

My testing environment has lots of RF interference, and I never see in actual testing the theoretical throughput speeds that vendors put on the packaging of wireless networking products?nor do I ever expect to. Still, I expected better throughput than the numbers in the chart from the DWA-182.

Only 802.11ac Adapter, But Do You Need It?
All of the makers of network hardware are rushing to get pre-draft 802.11ac technology to market and I think it's a waste at this point for the consumer. This includes the DWA-182. I'm just not seeing throughput from any of the products that nears the faster-than-Gigabit Ethernet speeds 11ac is supposed to deliver. This doesn't mean we won't see those speeds in the future, and the near future?we will. But robust 11ac isn't here yet. Unless you have just got to have an early 11ac adopter, the DWA-182 is for you?mainly because it's the only USB wireless adapter available. However, with no performance gains over 802.11n, I don?t see a use-case for this adapter for most wireless router owners. I'm also troubled by the inability of the adapter to connect to router that is not D-Link's. The DWA-182 earns 2.5 stars thanks mainly to easy setup and a cool wireless utility manager.?

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