Home networking is something that everyone knows a little about. Often times what they know is not accurate (to put it nicely). I have heard some of the most bizarre “facts” about home networks, wireless networking and pretty much everything under the sun. We here at DecryptedTech are officially kicking off our networking section with a review of the TRENDNet TEW-687GA; this is a 450Mbps wireless adapter (sort of). We first saw this back at CES when we had our meeting with Zak from TRENDNet. It is a rather large adapter that boasts the full Duplex speed of 450Mbps at a price of $94.99. Let’s take a look at this product and talk a little about wireless networking in general.
The TEW-687GA -The TRENDNet TEW-687GA is not so much an adapter as a single port wireless access point. It is quite large in comparison to other wireless adapters on the market. It also requires external power to run. There is not much to talk about with this device (at least not until we tear it apart). The front of the 687GA has a power LED, LAN LED, and a wireless LED.
The back of the 687GA has the power port and an RJ-45 port. The RJ-45 port is full GBe and allows you to make the most of the 225Mbps that you have available to you. I know you are wondering what I am talking about here. After all, the device says 450Mbps on it. Well that 450Mbps is Full Duplex. Full Duplex means that you have the same amount of traffic going both up and down. For example in a typical GBe network you can send AND receive 1Gb of data every second. But the paths are one way on each leg. You cannot combine them to get 2Gb/s of bandwidth. However you can technically say that each connection is 2Gb. So when you see 450Mbps what you are really getting is 225Mbps of theoretical bandwidth.
After we pulled off the rubber feet on the bottom of the 687GA we were able to find the two screws that held our wireless device together. After pulling the 687GA apart we found the heart of the 687GA; an RALNIK RT3883F wireless N chip. When you combine that with something like the TRENDNet TEW-691GR you have some impressive speeds (but we will cover that later).
