D-Link DI-724GU is an old generation of D-Link wireless router with print server delivering the speed up to 108Mbps in 2.4GHZ single band. THIS PRODUCT is DISCONTINUED in USA. You should consider the new D-Link DIR-632 with Print Server

D-Link DI-724GU was designed with wireless G standards delivering the speeds up to 108Mbps in ideal conditions. It supports the USB port to let you share the printer across the network either wired or wireless connection. By Aug 2009 the product was discontinued in US. D-Link introduced new generation of wireless router with print server capability D-Link DIR-632. How do you compare the old generation of DI-724GU with the new DI-724GU?

The following table shows the spec comparison between the two routers. Actually DI-724GU doesn’t compare to DIR-632. But since DI-724 is discontinued, one of the D-Link routers that can be configured for printer router is the D-Link DIR-632.

Wireless Standards
DI-724GU is powered by the legacy wireless 802.11g standards delivering the speeds up to 108Mbps. But the DIR-632 is powered by the latest wireless 802.11n technology delivering the speeds up to 300Mbps three times as fast as the DI-724GU. Both routers include two external antennas for better speed and coverage.

Ethernet Ports

The discontinued DI-724GU wireless printer router is equipped with 4x gigabit Ethernet ports while the DIR-632 includes 8x fast Ethernet ports (10/100Mbps). DIR-632 with more Ethernet ports is ideal for small offices for wired connection to the computers and laptops with NIC adapter ready. Unfortunately it doesn’t support gigabit ports. Are your computers ready with gigabit Ethernet ports? How fast do you demand the wired connection to the network? For standard networking tasks including file / document sharing, internet browsing and wired printing the 10/100Mbps speed is appropriate. Except you require supporting high intensive bandwidth applications such as streaming HD video and bulk data files transfer – gigabit Ethernet ports would speed-up the tasks significantly.

USB Port

The reason you require a wireless printer router is to support your “work” environment to let you host a shared printer eliminating the wireless print-server. Both DI-724GU and DIR-632 include one USB port. With DI-724GU router, you can use the USB port for hosting a shared printer and for Flash disk for Windows Connection Network (WCN) to help you configure the clients that don’t support the WPS.

The DIR-632 includes one USB port you can use for either shared storage or shared printer. You have two options in setting the USB port either the “shareport” or the “WCN”. With shareport you need to install the shareport utility into each of the computers on the network to allow you access the attached USB devices.

Should you require high performance environment with gigabit ports, high bandwidth and shared storage and shared printer concurrently, you can consider the Asus RT-N56U. Asus RT-N56U includes 4xGigabit ports and two USB ports. With two USB ports you can share both the printer and the storage at the same time. Or you can also consider the Apple Airport extreme with one USB port but you can add a USB hub to let you share the printer and the storage at the same time.

Click here for DIR-632 spec details.

Networking Diagram

The figure 1 shows wireless networking diagram that uses DIR-632 wireless printer router as the center of the network with shared printer. You can connect up to eight Ethernet-based devices to the router directly.

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