At a Glance
Product	D-Link MediaLounge DSM-G600 Wireless G Network Storage Enclosure
Summary	Wireless enabled BYOD NAS enclosure with Gigabit Ethernet and UPnP AV server
Pros	• Gigabit Ethernet support • Functions as 11g AP or client • Includes UPnP AV server
Cons	• No print server • No FTP or HTTP file access • Noisy fan • No backup features

5 April 2006 Editor's Note: This review describes the RevA version of the product, which was provided for review by D-Link. A more recent RevB version is also available. See the Forumz thread for a description of the RevB's differences.

There are a lot of consumer-level Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices on the market these days, and over the last year or so I've had the chance to try out quite a few. Most of them are designed to be hooked into a 100 Mbps wired network, and are typically used by other computers on the network for sharing and backing up data. However, with 1000 Mbps (Gigabit) networks becoming common, and more and more people having wireless networks in their home, maybe there's room for some additional network flexibility.

In this review, I'll be taking a look at an NAS product from D-Link that's a network "jack of all trades". The DSM-G600 supports 10, 100 and 1000 Mbps networks, and in addition, it supports wireless networks as either a client or an access point. And to top it all off, it has a built-in multimedia server to dish up music, movies and images to other devices on your network.

The front of the DSM-G600 has a row of status LEDs and a power button. On the back there's a single antenna, a network port, a fan vent, a reset button and two USB ports (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: DS-G600 Back Plate

Since the G600 is a "bring-your-own-disk" NAS device, a single 3.5" ATA/IDE drive must be installed before it can be used. Installing the disk is fairly simple, but also a little bit awkward - the power and IDE cable are positioned on the sides of the disk cage rather than on the end where they need to connect to the drive.

The device can operate wirelessly, but the documentation stated that initial configuration needed to be done over a wired network. For this reason, after my drive was in, I connected power and a network cable. When I powered the unit up, the fan immediately came on and was quite loud. I hoped that the fan was thermostatically controlled and thus would eventually turn off, but that was not the case - it runs continuously.

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