This is a slightly strange review – I’m reviewing an N-band router without actually owning (that I’m aware of) any equipment that receives N-band. However, what I want to know is whether (and the theory goes that it should) it will still improve signal strength.

The Zyxel comes in relatively modest packaging which, to be honest, is refreshing – a recycled box inside a thin exterior box and a few bags to hold individual pieces of equipment. Inside, there’s the router itself, two screw-on antenna (always good to see, so they can be replaced with more powerful versions, if you wish), a power supply, ethernet cable, ADSL cable, some brief instructions and a CD containing a router setup program and a more detailed manual.

The router itself is a smallish white unit with lights along the front of the top. This includes a handy wi-fi switch for quickly turning wireless off and on. Along the back is the usual 4 ethernet ports, ADSL port, power socket and, again handily, a power button.

As with most routers, set-up and administration is performed via a webpage (or via the supplied software) that you access via a supplied IP address, username and password (make sure you change the default password, though!). For initial ISP configuration, a “Wizard” will automatically configure this for you (although it can be performed manually, if you wish).

The administration menu was familiar to me, as it’s design is the same as the one on my ZyXEL NSA210 NAS drive.

The range of features available are quite considerable and suggests this is a router more for small businesses rather than your average consumer, especially considering the security features on offer. However, if like me, you like the “power options” then this will provide you with everything you might need – WMM, keyword-based website blocking, DDNS, a command-line Telnet interface, a packet-filtering firewall, management via SNMP and support for static routing and VLANs.

A firmware update is available, so I’d recommend upgrading that as soon as you can.

Testing

I set the ZyXEL up next to my current router, a Netgear DG834Gv4, and only had one powered on at a time. In all cases, encryption was turned on, but only WEP.

Signal tests were then performed one storey up and the other side of the house – in this case, my bedroom!

Running an Android wi-fi analyser I could see a definite 5-10db signal improvement from the ZyXEL, compared to the Netgear. Running Network Stumbler on my Netbook, I observed similar improvements (see graphs). For the layman, this is an extra bar on the wi-fi signal meter.

For file performance tests, I transferred 407MB of data (consisting of 118 files and 15 folders) between my Acer Netbook and my daughter’s aged IBM Thinkpad, both running Windows XP SP3. My Netbook was downstairs in the living room, whilst my daughter’s laptop was in her room – opposite ends and storeys of the house, ensuring they were a good distance apart. The router was situated downstairs, about half way between the two machines.

The Netgear performed the transfer in 5 minutes 40 seconds, equating to 1.2 MB/s. The ZyXEL performed the transfer in 5 minutes, 19 seconds, equating to 1.3 MB/s.

So, a definite improvement in signal strength, but little in the way of performance. As N to G band shouldn’t improve the speed itself, this is the result I expected.

Summary of Zyxel P-660HN-F1Z Wireless N 4-Port Router

An excellent router at a good price. Packed full of features, it may be overkill (and a little confusing) for the average consumer, but for a small business or “tech head” such as me it’s ideal.

Even if you haven’t yet upgraded your laptop to N-band, this will still provide a stronger signal strength.

At the time of the review, the best price I found was a little over £64 at eBuyer.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 3rd September 2010.

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Western Digital Elements SE

Now I have a Pogoplug, I really needed some hard drive storage to plug into it.

I’ve owned a couple of Western Digital Passport external USB drives before and have always found them to be small, quick and quiet – exactly what I was after in this case. So, I bought a 500GB Western Digital Elements SE.

The SE is a matt black (much better than the glossy black of the Passports which easily show the slightest scratch) slab of plastic. At one end is a micro USB connector (a change from the original mini USB of the Passport) and a white disk activity light. And that’s it.

All power is provided via the USB. With the Passport I found that I didn’t always get the necessary power and WD were very good in providing me with a replacement cable which splits into 2 USB connectors – one for data and power and the other for additional power. The WD website mentions that an “optional cable is available” for this purpose, but it doesn’t state how to get one or how much it costs.

The box packaging contains just the drive, a short USB cable and a small booklet (which is about the warranty rather than the drive itself). It works with Windows and Macs and is available in storage levels up to 1TB.

Now, back to that box a minute. WD refers to as “Earth friendly”, yet there’s no suggestion of the box being recycled, and they use plastic to hold the drive inside the box, rather than recyclable card. And the drive, inside the plastic is wrapped in plastic before being put in a plastic bag. And is it really that friendly to include a warranty leaflet that could have been placed on the drive itself? “Earth friendly” doesn’t cut it for me.

Plugged in, the drive is incredibly silent. Thankfully, WD haven’t felt the need to install any software, so it’s formatted and ready for use.

Performance

As per my recent USB memory stick review, I’m using CrystalDiskMark for benchmarking the drive.

I’ve used this software, and recorded the results, for a number of different disk types in the past – internal, external, flash drives (e.g. SD), USB memory sticks, etc.

In a direct comparison to a previous Western Digital USB external drive that I’ve owned (a 60GB passport drive), it has similar scores, although a little slower (to be expected because of the larger driver size).

The results were as follows:

Read Sequentially: 25.51 MB/s
Read 512k files: 18.12 MB/s
Read 4k files: 0.426 MB/s

Write Sequentially: 24.06 MB/s
Write 512k files: 23.67 MB/s
Write 4k files: 1.164 MB/s

Read performance lags behind internal SATA drives (although it’s quicker than the internal drive in my work laptop!), as you’d expect, as well as the WD Passport Drive. There are a few other quick exceptions (an SDHC card with a rather good small file read speed and a very quick 2GB USB memory stick) but, overall, the drive has the performance that I’d expect. When it comes to reading small files, the SE shows high speeds that are more consistent with SATA drives.

Write performance is only beaten by the SATA drives and the WD Passport. And, when I refer to the Passport being quicker, I should add that it is only marginally so. Small file writing is very fast, second only to my Passport drive – and that includes SATA internal drives. Other write speeds are up 5 times quicker than, say, a USB memory stick.

Summary of WD Elements SE 500GB

Quiet, small, a decent lick of speed and a good price. What else could you ask for? Ignoring the odd environmental claims and WD’s need to keep changing USB connection types, this is a smart option for anyone needing a small external USB drive.

I bought mine for a smidge under £60 from my local Tesco, and it’s the cheapest price that I can currently find.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 1st September 2010.

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Pogoplug

Pogoplug is a really great concept. Essentially, it’s a box in which you plug in your home router and then one, or more, USB drives. The Pogoplug then connects these drives to “the cloud” where you can instantly access their contents wherever you are – via their website or using desktop software.

Up until now I’ve been using Dropbox – this doesn’t require any hardware and is simply a free storage area which you can freely access. However, this only comes with 2GB of storage, without having to pay a monthly fee.

Now, I have a 500GB USB hard drive connected to a Pogoplug, on which my daughter can backup her Laptop and I can backup my Netbook, wherever we may be. I can share files and allow others to send files to me.

Pogoplug started off a number of years in the US. Their first Pogoplug was literally a plug – it’s a large white box, with some status lights on the front, and an ethernet and USB socket underneath, which plugs into the mains. More recently they’ve launched their newest offering, including into Europe. The new Pogoplug is a bright pink standalone box with 4 USB connectors. Otherwise, though, it works just the same.

I have the original version (all you need to do is swap out the figure 8 power lead to a UK equivalent). For the sake of simplicity we’ll call the original “v1″ and the new one “v2″!

So, I plug it in, run the supplied ethernet cable from the Pogoplug to my router and then plug my USB drive in (you can use USB hubs as well, so whatever number of USB sockets your Pogoplug has, you can always add more devices). I go to the Pogoplug website to setup my profile and it automatically detects and registers my device. Immediately I’m shown the content of the drive via their web interface. As well as the usual access options, I can also set up sharing options so that I can allow other users access to my drive contents.

There’s also desktop software (which includes 64-bit versions), as well as apps for the major phones OS’. Naturally, I have the Android version, and that allows me to save phone content to my drive as well as access the contents.

The desktop software maps your Pogoplug to a drive letter – I often find after a PC reboot that I have to select the option to “Reload” the Pogoplug for it to be picked up again. Hopefully this will be rectified in future program or firmware versions – firmware updates to the plug are handled automatically, so this isn’t even something you have to worry about.

But that’s about it. And that is what’s so good about it – it’s so simple to use. It was my youngest daughter’s Christening last weekend – I was so busy during the event I hardly got chance to get any photos. I knew other guests had, so I emailed everyone for them to send me copies. Of course, full size versions are going to be many MB each, so if somebody had taken lots of photos it was going to be difficult to share that. Pogoplug stepped in and I easily set up a shared folder and distributed links. In no time at all I had a folder full of photos.

Are there any downsides? Well, unlike Dropbox, which copies all the files onto your PC for quick access, all file access on Pogoplug is done directly with your attached drives. When you’re connected to your home network it goes directly and, therefore, quickly. However, when away, it works slower as all reads and writes are done directly back to the Pogoplug attached drives. I’d post access speeds, but my only remote access point away from home is at work, where I can only use the public wireless network. And that goes so slow to be near unusable. None-the-less, it is (and it’s to be expected) noticeably slower than when on your own network.

Also, I don’t appear to be able to access it from work (the non-public network) – I’m guessing it’s a firewall config issue, but I can get to Dropbox without any problems.

For the more technically minded, Pogoplug provide an API so that anyone can write code to access Pogoplug content – you can be sure they’ll be some WordPress plugins coming soon to do this (although I don’t as yet have ideas on what exactly they would do – if you have any ideas yourself, let me know!).

Summary of Pogoplug

Simple to use, yet incredibly powerful. A little slow at times, but this means all files are held at a single repository. Why pay monthly fees for fixed cloud storage where, for a one off hardware cost, you can have all the content you could want (or plugin)? Dust off those old hard drives, stick them in caddies and plug them into your Pogoplug!

You can see why this has been a hit with students in particular – leave all your data in a single, safe location and access it wherever you want.

Right now, Dixons have an exclusive £10 off, making it now only £69.99. An absolute bargain.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 30th August 2010.

Update (March 2011):

I’ve been happily running my Pogoplug for over 6 months now, so I thought I’d share a few things about it that I didn’t know at the beginning.

• When sharing folders via My Pogoplug there is an option to create an RSS feed of the contents. Got a wi-fi enabled photo frame? Simply create an RSS share of a folder containing favourite photos and supply it to the photo frame. Or use the same method to set random desktop wallpapers on your PC using a program such as John’s Background Switcher.
• Want to get more from your Pogoplug? How about adding a completely different operating system to it onto which you can install various advanced tools? PlugApps will do just that. You’ll loose access to My Pogoplug, though, and it will void your warranty.
• One really good use for the Pogoplug is remote backups. I’ve set my daughters laptop up to automatically backup to a special Pogoplug shared folder (using the excellent SyncBack) and this is an ideal solution because she can use it whether she’s at home or otherwise.
• Pogoplugged is a great un-official forum (although Pogoplug link to it as a “Community Forum”) and general Pogoplug news site.

With it’s own API for both desktop and web developers I was expecting to find lots of useful utilities or sites making use of Pogoplug – sadly this doesn’t appear to be the case. There are plenty of suggestions in the forum, but there appears to be a lack of developers acting upon them.

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