Wireless network performance

Before we show you the data from our measurements, let's take a look at the apartment that was used in our testing and how it is set up. You can see that the router is placed in the living room. With most wireless routers, the signal strength is not that high in places like the Kitchen and the Medium balcony.

 

Our testing was done using a fast 1 Gigabit Internet connection that is capable of uploads on the internet of up to 500 Mbps. We used an HP Spectre 13 laptop for all our measurements and several software tools.

To get a better perspective of the performance offered by D-Link DIR-822, we compared it with ASUS RT-AC1200G+ and TP-Link Archer C1200. We analyzed the 2.4 GHz band first and measured the signal strength with inSSIDer. Below, you can see that the signal strength offered by D-Link DIR-822. As you can see, the signal strength was good in all rooms.

Next, we used SpeedTest to measure how fast the internet connection offered by this router is when using 2.4 GHz wireless network. The average download speed provided by D-Link DIR-822 was excellent, beating its competitors in most rooms.

The same was true when measuring the upload speed in each room.

Continuing our measurements on the 2.4 GHz wireless network, we used the PassMark Performance test to transfer data between two computers connected to the network. D-Link DIR-822 was again the fastest router in this comparison, in all the rooms of our test apartment.

The upload speed was similarly fast, in all rooms.

The average speed you get from the D-Link DIR-822 is very fast for an AC1200 wireless router, on the 2.4 GHz wireless band.

For the next set of measurements, we analyzed the performance of the 5GHz wireless band. We looked at the evolution of the signal strength, from room to room. This time, D-Link DIR-822 performed worse than its competitors.

Then, we ran SpeedTest to see how fast the internet connection is when using the 5GHz band. D-Link DIR-822 was much slower than its competitors in all rooms. In the medium balcony, the wireless network barely functioned.

The same trend was noticed when measuring the upload speed on the 5 GHz band.

For the last measurements on the 5GHz wireless network, we used the PassMark Performance test to transfer data between two computers connected to the network. D-Link DIR-822 was again, much slower than its competitors, in all rooms. This time though, the wireless network in the medium balcony worked better than in the previous test.

The upload speed was disappointing in most rooms.

The wireless performance offered by D-Link DIR-822 on the 5 GHz band is disappointing.

Wired network performance

To test the quality of the wired Ethernet connection, we used a desktop PC, equipped with an Intel Core i5 4460 processor, running at 3.20GHz, 16GB of RAM and a very fast Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD, and a Lenovo IdeaCentre 610s mini PC.

We measured the speed of the internet connection when using a 1 Gbps Ethernet cable, using SpeedTest. D-Link DIR-822 has offered transfer speeds that were close to 100 Mbps. However, other AC1200 routers with a similar price can provide speeds that are close to 1 Gbps.

Then, we ran a network transfer between the two computers, using the PassMark Performance test. D-Link DIR-822 offered very similar performance to the previous test.

The Ethernet connections offered by D-Link DIR-822 work at 100 Mbps while competing routers with a similar price can deliver 1 Gbps.

Extra features

D-Link DIR-822 is an affordable router and, as a result, it does not bundle many advanced features that you find on mid-range and premium routers. The extra tools that it offers are the following:

• Dynamic DNS - you can use the Dynamic DNS services offered by dyndns.com and oray.cn with your router so that you can access it from anywhere on the internet.
• QoS - a basic Quality of Service feature, that helps you prioritize network traffic based on your rules. However, it involves a lot of manual labor to set up.
• Parental Controls - are present in the form of website filters that need to be manually setup and maintained. They are not very useful.
• Guest networks - one guest network for each WiFi band. However, you cannot isolate your guests from the rest of the network.

D-Link also offers a mobile app for setting up your wireless router. It is named QRS Mobile and its available for iOS and Android. It is a bare-bones app that has not been updated in a long time, and you can use it only for the initial setup. You cannot use it to administer your router, or the way the network works, making this app very limited in value.

What is your opinion about D-Link DIR-822 AC1200 wireless router?

Now you know our opinion about the D-Link DIR-822 AC1200 wireless router and how it performed in our testing. If you already have this router at home, do not hesitate to share your experience in a comment below. Other readers will find it useful.