The 713 has one screen that handles all wireless configuration duties.  All you can do is set the Network (SSID) ID, Channel, enable 40bit WEP encryption and set a 10 digit Hexadecimal (no alpha or other characters allowed) security key. Encryption comes disabled by default, SSID set to "WLAN" and channel set to 11.

I had no problem getting a Farallon SkyLine 11Mb PC card to connect to the 713 with its default settings.  I basically followed the procedure on this page.

The 713 lacks wireless network monitoring capabilities, however.  You have no way of knowing:

• How many clients are using the network

• MAC or IP address of clients

• State (active, roaming, etc.) of clients

• Network statistics (error rate, packets sent/received, etc.)

You can control wireless LAN client Internet access by using the 713's Access Control feature.  You can't, however, control access to the wireless LAN by client MAC or IP address, or control access by roaming clients.

It's not uncommon for these features to be missing from lower-cost Access Points and you probably won't miss them.  But it's probably only a matter of time before someone starts to add them and "raise the bar" for the competition.  It would be nice to see D-Link lead the way on this.

I used netIQ's free QCheck utility for the 713's speed trials.  Tests were done using a Farallon SkyLine 11Mb PC card as the wireless client, and a Windows PC as the other LAN client.  Both clients are on the LAN side of the router, so these tests do not include the router. Here are the results:

(Tests run with:
 - WEP encryption DISABLED
- 11Mbps forced
- Power Save disabled)
[2.51 build 9 firmware]

(Details of how we tested can be found here.) 

I tried a little variation on my usual testing and forced the Farallon card to 11Mbps Transmit mode instead of letting it adjust speed automatically.  I did this because I have previously found that cards that did not constantly switch speed modes had better throughput, so I thought I'd try forcing the mode. Throughput for good signal strength was a very respectable 4.5Mbps, comparable to the results I obtained with the Linksys WAP11. But for the Condition 4 test, it had the opposite effect!  I found that I could about double the 0.65Mbps result to 1.7Mbps by letting the card go back to adjusting its Transmit range automatically.

Update 2/27/01: Since the separated-at-birth twin to the DI-713, the SMC Wireless Barricade, is so popular, and I never checked for throughput degradation with WEP enabled, I thought I should run the test. I did (using the SMC) and found less than 5% degradation (from 4.5Mbps to 4.4Mbps under Condition 1), with 64bit WEP enabled.

I tested the routing speed of the 713 separately, since it can be used that way.  Here are the results:

[Tests run with 2.51 build 9 firmware]

(Details of how we tested can be found here.) 

These results are in line with the newer generation router speeds and fast enough for most broadband connections.  I also ran UDP stream tests at 500kbps and WAN-LAN results showed little speed degradation or error rate. LAN-WAN results came in at about 445kbps with about a 10% error rate.  

D-Link has done a nice job with the 713, with flexible WAN connectivity (including via dialup modem), fast routing speed, and good wireless performance.  The only downside is the price, which is $50-$75 higher (on-line pricing as of 1/3/01) than the very similar SMC7004WBR, which also has a built-in Windows print server.