Like any range extender setting up the DAP-1860 is a fairly straightforward affair, albeit with one or two caveats. The first is finding the proper location to extend your existing network will take a bit of trial and error. Too close and the overall size of the improved network coverage will not be as big as it could be, too far away and your extended networks speed will stink on ice. This usually means plugging in a range extender, going through the setup process to see if it is in an optima location, moving it closer/further away and doing this over and over again until you hit the butter zone.
Thankfully to D-Link actually took this into consideration. So with this little bad boy, you simply plug it in, wait for it to connect and then see what the signal strength meter on the front tells you. This one tweak will save you a lot of time… and really should be the de-facto standard for all future range extenders!
Once you do find the perfect location you will then have to configure it. There are two ways of doing this: wired and wirelessly. D-Link does include the default SSID and password for the networks it will start broadcasting once it is connected to an existing wireless network… but to really make things easy the best way is to plug in a RJ45 cable to a system and then directly connect to the device. Doing it that way means that if you do choose to change the network names or passwords… you will not be disconnected before the setup is complete.
The User-Interface on the other hand is a touch on the… spartan side. As, in an effort to make it as user-friendly as possible, D-Link has paired the UI back to basic. In an addition to being able to re-setup/re-configure the DAP-1860 you can also basically change how it connects to your router, what its default Ip address will be, check and update its firmware via the Internet, and other very, very basic tasks. If you are interested in more advanced features such as Stateful Packet Inspection you will be disappointed. Thankfully few will even notice such advanced features are missing.
On the positive side it does come with a pretty decent management section that does have a good list of options including real time monitoring of usage.
Overall this really is one of the easiest Range Extenders to setup and configure, but some of this ease of use does come at the expense of lack of advanced features.
